Already with his debut work, Generation Golf , Florian Illies achieved great success as a chronicler of the German condition. More recently, his contemplative histories, 1913 and Love in a Time of Hate , have enthralled audiences worldwide. In each of these works, the epoch just before a World War is vividly brought back to life. In his latest book, Zauber der Stille or ‘the magic of silence’, the art historian Illies delves far back into German Romanticism, portraying the life of the painter Caspar David Friedrich as a way to trace an important epoch of German history, one that saw the emergence of modernity. He presents Friedrich as a painter of awestruck introspection, standing just before the abyss of abstraction. This symphony concert, The Sound of Silence , offers an accompanying soundtrack, showing that Friedrich was not the only artist to tread this path.