When William Shakespeare's sonnets appeared in 1609, readers should have been surprised. "Romeo and Juliet" and "Macbeth" were fresh in their memories and he was well known as a great playwright, but his love poems posed riddles. So contradictory, abysmal, mysterious, sometimes disturbing and even provocative were they, quite unlike the customs of the time. Was Shakespeare creating from the world in which he lived, or were the sonnets fiction after all? In any case, they marked the beginning of modern poetry and they struck the audience of that time with great emotional force.. 412 years later, Shakespeare's sonnets have lost none of their magic. This fascination brought the actress Birgit Minichmayr and the pianist and composer Bernd Lhotzky together to cast nine of the 154 sonnets in sound, to comment on them and even to raise them to a new level of interpretation. On "As An Unperfect Actor" they are supported by Quadro Nuevo, the adventurous ensemble around saxophonist Mulo Francel The project is a debut for Birgit Minichmayr, the first time the actress has presented a full album as a singer. Films such as "Alle Anderen", for which she received the German Film Critics' Award for Best Actress in 2009, Matthias Glasner's "Gnade" (2012) or "3 Days in Quiberon" (2018) by Emily Atef have made her known on screen, and now she is taking to the microphone. Exciting new territory, but Minichmayr is completely at home with Shakespeare: as an ensemble member of Vienna's Burgtheater, she has repeatedly lived through the harrowingly dramatic lives of the playwright's characters, especially the demonic rage of Lady Macbeth, the sadness of Ophelia and even the fool's uncomfortable truths in King Lear Minichmayr's intoxicating musicality is captivating. Her bittersweet voice is poignant and of great urgency. With natural instinct she finds artful ways of phrasing. For this, Bernd Lhotzky has created a broad and immensely meaningful musical stage for her to spread out on. As Minichmayr says, "He got so deep into the meaning of each sonnet. We talked a lot about the color and meaning of each poem." This is already impressively clear in the opening piece: in "My Mistress' Eyes" Minichmayr makes it unmistakably clear who is taking the lead here through the wondrous world of the sonnets, and literally "wears the trousers", because in Shakespeare's day, women were not yet allowed on stage. Lhotzky comments on this with a biting tango that belongs to the male domain, but here is sung fearlessly by a woman. As the album progresses, the listener is magically transported to new musical and emotional places. A bath of emotions, as Minichmayr says, "Through singing I was able to find deep love, or deep sadness. That touched me a lot." We're right into the elegiac world of "Sin Of Self-Love" or the world-weariness of "Tired With All These," and end up in the major-key satisfaction of "Mine Eye Hath Played The Painter." Lhotzky proves to be an extremely multi-faceted tunesmith. He's best known for "Echoes of Swing," but his range on "As An Imperfect Actor" is far greater, with allusions to the songwriting of a Georges Brassens, Robert Plant or even James Taylor. It is the lightness and straightforwardness in Lhotzky's melodies that touch the listener quite immediately With Quadro Nuevo, Lhotzky has found ideal partners to realize his musical ideas. The globetrotters in music have developed their very own language of sound poetry beyond the usual genre pigeonholes. Whether tango, oriental, chansoniesque or completely jazzy - fabulous timbres, verve and great empathy make the band unique. The young Philipp Schiepek deserves special attention. Lhotzky: "He is a phenomenal guitarist. With his acoustic guitar he takes us back to the origins, to John Dowland's songs with lute. And the fact that he also plays electric jazz guitar is a link across the centuries." On "As An Imperfect Actor" Bernd Lhotzky's kaleidoscopic musical vision and Birgit Minichmayr's sense for moods have triumphantly united. In this "perfect ceremony of love ritual," as Sonnet #23 puts it, they never seem to run out of surprises. By making Shakespeare's sonnets sound in the truest sense of the word, they have thus created a new, quite unique form of experiential poetry.