DJ superstar Sven Väth in Valentine's Day gig

A legend of the turntables whose career predates the era of the superstar DJ, Sven Väth is electronic music's renaissance man. With more than three decades at the decks, the 50-year-old from Frankfurt has been a bona fide pop star, a club impresario, a multifaceted businessman and, arguably, the man who saved Ibiza when it threatened to descend into terminal cheesiness.

Väth is returning to the city to perform at the W Hong Kong's Woobar on Valentine's Day after an absence of many years. Since his last visit, he has made headline appearances at the largest electronic music festivals throughout the world and maintained a busy touring schedule.

But if there is a place that's particularly close to his heart, it's probably the famed Spanish party island where he still lives for about half of the year. Väth grew up with music-loving parents, and knew he wanted to be involved in music from an early age, but it was his first trip to Ibiza as a teenager that made up his mind. "I was obsessed well before my first visit to Ibiza, but when I returned from my first trip there, I was certain," he says.

He got his first break, though, in rather less glamorous surroundings — the British pub owned by his parents. "When I came back from Ibiza, my mother called me and asked me to DJ in her pub. This was the start of everything."

These days Väth is known as a master of a range of electronic music styles, but mostly techno and the less commercial end of trance. He is a big name in his native Germany, widely revered as the country's most gifted electronic artist.

His path to fame started in rather different musical circumstances, though: as a fairly unlikely pop star. After getting a residency at a club in Frankfurt, he started to produce music of his own, and in 1986 scored a surprise hit with Electrica Salsa.