The beginning of the Romantic era ushered in the Age of the Virtuoso. Virtually every known instrument could boast at least one supremely gifted performer - the Violin and Piano had dozens of advocates, even the Double Bass had Bottesini who extended that instrument's expressive capabilities. This was also a time of eccentric musical hybrids, such as the Arpeggione (a guitar-like cello), the keyed trumpet and the BASSETTO. Designed as a miniature Double Bass, with it's strings tuned like a sub-bass violin, this musical oddity was intended to free the Bass to become an instrument of soaring virtuosity.

In their lieder transcription project, Silvio Dalla Torre and Matthias Petersen have equally assembled a program united by the spirit of singing. Songs without words are there together with songs with words which, in pure instrumental performance, must use subtle tonal differences to express the emotions of the original poetry. By making the unutterable audible, the interplay between the bassetto and piano presents non-verbal instrumental music as the most Romantic of all the arts.