Wolfgang Rihm - Rihm Edition, Vol. 1: Musik für Oboe und Orchester; Styx und Lethe; Dritte Musik; Erster Doppelgesang (2007)

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Wolfgang Rihm - Rihm Edition, Vol. 1: Musik für Oboe und Orchester; Styx und Lethe; Dritte Musik; Erster Doppelgesang (2007)

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Wolfgang Rihm (born in 1952) is one of the most important European composers of the late twentieth to early twenty first centuries, but his work is little known in America. He is famous for his productivity; before his 50th birthday, he had written over 400 pieces. The four concertos recorded here are similar in their manic energy, offering few moments of repose. The expressive directions for Music for oboe and orchestra include the instructions "as if overwound," "wild and funny," and "frantic," and those phrases aptly describe the effect of his work. Rihm is an unabashed modernist, and the surface of his music may be too prickly for some listeners, but it's deeply expressive, and at times very funny, such as at the end of the oboe concerto.

Rihm has written, "Am I a writer when I try to set up characters in music, when I am concerned with drama, lyric rhythm, semantic clarity?" He is an expert dramatist, as his operas Die Eroberung von Mexico and Jacob Lenz demonstrate, and he brings that same instinct for drama to his orchestral music. In his first Doppelgesang, a double concerto for viola and cello, he was specifically thinking about the friendship and conflict between Verlaine and Rimbaud, and Styx und Lethe for cello and orchestra is a sonic depiction of the two rivers that flow through the underworld. An awareness of those associations can help the listener make sense of the colorful but thorny music. A variety of orchestras, conductors, and soloists were gathered for this CD and they perform with high energy and an obvious commitment to the music's expressive content. For the adventurous listener, Rihm's music offers much to ponder and appreciate.

Review by Stephen Eddins, Allmusic.com

It's a formidable task for any record label to launch an edition devoted to the works of a single living composer, but when that composer is Wolfgang Rihm the challenge is increased tenfold. Rihm is astonishingly prolific and continues to compose works far faster than any company could possibly record them. Nevertheless, Hänssler has launched its Rihm Edition, and though a couple of discs have appeared already, this new, raspingly well-performed collection of concertante works is designated as Volume 1.

The pieces range across a quarter century of Rihm's career, from 1980's Erster Doppelgesang, for viola, cello and orchestra, to the Music for Oboe and Orchestra that was reworked five years ago. The oboe work is in many ways the least striking of the pieces here, with the long opening solo giving way to rather short-breathed exchanges between the oboe and the orchestra, while Styx und Lethe, for cello and orchestra, from 1998 is the stand-out piece, with its Xenakis-like solo writing generating a furious dialogue that moves steadily upwards in a series of unsettling musical images.

Review by Andrew Clements, The Guardian

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Wolfgang Rihm - Rihm Edition, Vol. 1: Musik für Oboe und Orchester; Styx und Lethe; Dritte Musik; Erster Doppelgesang (2007)

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Wolfgang Rihm - Rihm Edition, Vol. 1: Musik für Oboe und Orchester; Styx und Lethe; Dritte Musik; Erster Doppelgesang (2007)

Close