"I have discovered the greatest guitar composer of modern times." So wrote Nicolai Makaroff, a wealthy Russian guitar aficiando, who travelled widely through Europe in search of the best guitars and the finest guitar composers. He was introduced to Johann Kaspar Mertz, whom he claims changed his life. "I felt like a Columbus discovering a new America, for here was the great guitar composer I had long given up hope of finding."
What Makaroff found, in Mertz, was a composer able to write in the musical idiom of his day, a guitar voice to compare to Schumann and Schubert. Mertz is the seminal guitar composer of the Romantic Period.
-John Schneiderman
