"Composed to the soul": Dorothee Mields Sings Hasse and Abel Laurence Sterne, the famous author of Tristram Shandy, played the gamba as a hobby and was a friend of Carl Friedrich Abel, the most famous gambist of his times. In his works Sterne repeatedly mentioned Abel as the gambist who moved his listeners to tears. Another contemporary ranked Abel, "the Sterne of Music," with the successful author: "the one wrote, and the other composed to the soul." Dorothee Mields has now joined forces with the gambist Simone Eckert and her Hamburger Ratsmusik for an entertaining program featuring arias, quartets, and concertos by Abel and his contemporary Johann Adolf Hasse. Abel served as "chamber musician to the King of Poland" in the Dresden court chapel for ten years prior to earning international renown as a soloist and composer in London. In all our selections the gamba occupies the focus as the solo instrument, and the ensemble for the two amply dimensioned arias with soprano, viola da gamba, and accompanying strings is a source of special fascination.