As far back as I can remember, I have always been fascinated with fairy tales: with their archetypal characters and set phrases like ‘Once upon a time …’ and ‘… they all lived happily ever after’. Fairy tales were however also a source of unrest for me as a seismograph of mankind’s underlying primal fears and desires. So as a performer and composer I have always felt that Robert Schumann’s Märchenerzählungen [Fairy Tales] (scored for the same instrumentation as my own composition) was a disjointed, complex contemporary work – despite the innocence and naivety of its initial appearance. I therefore do not intend my own Es war einmal … [Once upon a time …] to be a mere sentimental, nostalgic flight into the distant past, but as a naive and fantastical alternative concept to our genuine world with all its upheavals. Jörg Widmann