Johannes Möller

A Star in the Sky, a Universe Within... op. 4

Moller is a unique player / composer. I have never seen his like, and I imagine there are few if any people performing quite the way he does, or play the sort of music that he composes, which is extremely unusual, and unlike anything you have ever heard or seen before. Witness his YouTube performance of this piece Live in Saratoga: an amazing performance. However, the trouble comes when you open the sheet music. Firstly, you need one of those partial capos; because it is written for this particular capo to be placed over only strings 1-5, leaving string 6 open. So you find that the music has two staves throughout: the first, how it sounds and the second, where you would play it if you assumed that the capo was there, and that Fret 4 has become the open strings (for only 1-5 though, remember). If this was a little off-putting, wait till you see the actual score. Rarely before have I seen a score that, more than ever, is a mere approximation of how it is to be played. The timing is so free, and the plethora of small notes and oddly grouped notes makes for an almost impossible task to read, and I defy anyone to make either head or tail of it, without reference to his fabulous YouTube performance. After you see that, then the page starts to make sense and you know then at least how to interpret the dots you are looking at but still don't understand. Add to that, the numerous places where you have to play a tremolo section that goes off the fingerboard and keeps going upwards to notes you have never attempted before and you are left with a frankly bewildering manuscript of what proves to be a beautiful piece. The trouble is, what you hear, is just about un-writeable on a musical stave. Lots of pieces are hard to play and I often say that you need a wonderful technique to do so but this piece takes this several stages beyond that. I can only say that I cannot see more than a very tiny handful of people ever being able to play this piece and I'll bet you won't find anyone else but Moller, actually doing so for the foreseeable future.
Chris Dumigan (Classical Guitar Magazine)

This is a solo guitar composition that could easily be treated as a two-part piece, starting with a two-and-a-half-page introduction ("Spacious and contemplative”) followed by a much longer tremolo section. It is in the unusual key of G# minor. The score appears in two staves: the lower shows the way of playing, the upper indicates the sounding of the music. This is not necessarily uncommon, but then the work also calls for a capo that covers only five strings, leaving the sixth open to sound at its natural E. Players should be aware that this eliminates many capos - at least the older ones I have - that are limited to covering all six strings simultaneously. This is a compelling piece. The suggested tremolo pattern contains five notes, though the composer allows for the standard four-note one as an alternative. Another interesting feature of the piece is the manner in which the melody often climbs to the very highest register, beyond the fretboard. And there are bars in which the left hand alone plays tied (legato) notes while the right hand executes harmonies. Johannes Moller belongs to the younger generation of Swedish guitarists and composers, and he was inspired for this music, he tells us, by the endless cosmos. As he expresses it, he was looking at the stars, wondering about the things that humans have done. His intention was to respond with a mysterious and emotional music. I can only suggest that players obtain this title and decide for themselves whether he has succeeded.
-Uros Dojcinovic (Soundboard Magazine)