The music of Wolfgang Rihm

[Beef Oven!]

No shortage of Rihm on Hear & Now tonight ... his mammoth 100-minute dance piece Tutuguri.

Regret not knowing that it was on at the Barbican earlier today.

I will pick that up on listen again - thanks Boilk

H&N clashes with Match Of The Day, so I'm not in the habit of tuning in (although I didn't watch MOTD this evening, I've been listening to several Sibelius symphonies).

[Bryn]

Well, after the first and second Reich lat night we were thankfully spared a ... . The audio engineers flew by the seat of their pants during Tutuguri. They normally go for a headroom of around 6dB to allow for the unexpected. Part 4 of Tutuguri has a peak of 2dB below saturation. Thank goodness they did not employ the sort of dynamic limiting that was applied to Havergal Brian's Gothic at the Proms.

I tried listening to it via the iPlayer this morning but due to working lates this past week I drifted off a few minutes after the eventual start of Parts 1 to 3. I have since prepared for another try and it's going well, so far.

[Mandryka]

I searched for Rihm in titles and found this neglected discussion. I was looking for Rihm comments because of the piano music. He’s clearly written a lot of it over a long period of time, and some significant pianists play it and indeed make recordings, but to me it all sounds absolutely dreadful, totally uninspired and horrible. Some of his other music I like, chamber music and vocal music and opera, and I just wonder how it can be that this composer, who can make a perfectly OK, better than OK, string quartet or lied, seems to have such a blind spot for piano.


What I’m kind of hoping is that someone will talk up his piano music, give me some clues about what’s eluding me, preventing me appreciating it all.

[Richard Barrett]

Not me. Actually I find pretty much any of his music completely unmemorable, apart from the weird trombone solo in Jagden und Formen which sounds as if it was written an octave too high by mistake.

[edashtav]

I have heard a little of his music recently, both small pieces happened to be played by the Arditti Quartet, most recently from Witten courtesy of Hear and Now. Wigmore Hall are performing several of his works and i am considering a trip down,

http://www.wigmore-hall.org.uk/whats-on/series/wolfgang-rihm-focus-day

His music is rarely mentioned on these boards, or others, and i wonder what his 'standing' is among listeners of new music.

I’ve heard a good deal of Rihm, more by accident than design as his works are often programmed as token nods in the direction of contemporary music.
These words by the musicologist, Fabrice Fitch, in a Gramophone review of some violin works by WR strike me as fair but frank:
” One of the disconcerting things about listening to Wolfgang Rihm’s music is the impression of a composer thinking aloud, but on paper. It’s as though he’d lost his eraser, permanently: rather than edit, he reconsiders and rectifies but never corrects.”

[Mandryka]

Well having abused Rihm a year ago I now have to eat my words. Someone has sent me a concert recording from Paris in 2017, The Arditti Quartet playing Rihm 13. It is fabulous! (And much better than the commercial recording, which I think is lacklustre.) If anyone wants it let me know.