It is difficult not to wonder if one’s perspective of Andreas von Wangenheim is slightly misled by him being called a guitarist. Why didn’t he become a pianist or a sculptor for that sake? The incident that sparked his lifelong passion, him stumbling upon a guitar at the attic of his grandparent’s house as a boy, seems to be a coincidence that became the reason for him to make the guitar the embodiment of his art. For when Professor Andreas von Wangenheim teaches his students guitar at the Music Academy in Lucerne, he likes to combine technical skill with certain important musical aspects such as the rhythm of body movements and the perspective of light and shadow. Technique was never a goal in itself, but merely a tool for expression for the native of Hamburg, whose musical influence includes such diverse teachers as the pupil of Walter Gerwig, lutenist Eike Funck and Oscar Ghiglia. Not a stranger to old music, he won the great Bach prize back in the ‘80s, which sparked his international career and his first CD with own arrangements of Bach’s cello suites. The CD became a bestseller but when asked about it, he complains being called a Bach-expert ever since and confesses that South American or contemporary music for example is as much his domain as the music of his fellow countryman Bach. Again, for him it is not specialisation but universalism in expression that is on his artistic mind. This can clearly be heard in his own compositions and improvisations, which bare the scent of his strong connection to amongst others the Hamburg Jazz Scene of the ‘70s. It is a deeper expression under the shiny well polished facade, the variety of contrasts which is a condition of beauty; nature’s unpredictable spontaneity. That is what drives his art. And therefore he appears in his music to be liberated from any confinement sticking to the categorization of his instrument.