The Rotenburg Guitar Week is always a wonderful experience, but this year the atmosphere was especially harmonious, with everyone feeling like part of one big guitar family. Thanks to the glorious sunshine, we were able to eat, practise and rehearse outdoors every day. There were also bike rides, jogging sessions and trips to Bullensee lake.

In his workshop, Alexander Ramírez introduced us to Barrios and Jiménez, perfectly setting the stage for his colourful concert, which featured works by these composers, among others.

On the day of his concert, Kristina Vårlid even made him a lovingly decorated Nutella sandwich so he could have a lie-in. :-)

Her workshop focused on perfect intonation and was followed by a little competition in which everyone tried to play the most beautiful major third (and the winner was: Alex!).

Kristina’s concert took us on a journey through beautifully colourful music from the Romantic and Impressionist periods, but also into darker depths. She challenged the audience to guess which film inspired Rák’s piece Voces de profundis – and someone got it right: it was Hitchcock’s Psycho. She dedicated her interpretation of Tedesco’s Capriccio diabolico to our (diabolical?) artistic director, Nicola.

RGW 2026 Closing Concert

And then, of course, there was Wednesday’s concert featuring Duo Woch x Guzik: With their dazzling virtuosity and sheer joy of playing, the two musicians enriched our Guitar Week both musically and personally.

Adam celebrated his birthday during the week but didn’t want to make a big deal of it. His duo partner Robert secretly let us in on it, so we spent the evening coming up with a little surprise. Participant Luis then had the brilliant idea of sticking letters onto the bottoms of beer bottles so that, when we clinked our bottles together that evening, a birthday greeting would appear.

Alongside the inspiring masterclasses, our guitar orchestra also met every evening, with different conductors taking turns at the helm. This year, we worked on a fantastic suite from the film How to Train Your Dragon, specially arranged for us by Dustin and Mikel. Fittingly, we also enjoyed an evening of selected scenes from the film, allowing us to experience the music in its original context.

Our guitar and sheet music exhibition was particularly special this year, too. Alongside regular exhibitors such as Markus Dietrich and Acoustic Music Books, we welcomed two outstanding young guitar makers, Michael Dittmann and Johan Taxhet.

All in all, we enjoyed a fulfilling and focused week that was also wonderfully relaxing, and we are already really looking forward to next time!

RGW 2026 Photo Gallery