On 13 March, Wolfgang Rihm will celebrate his 70th birthday. For labels keen to mark the anniversary of one of Germany’s leading living composers, there’s no shortage of Rihm’s music still to be recorded, for though he is very well represented on disc, his output is so huge – more than 500 works at the last count – that the coverage is still by no means comprehensive. These performances, with Tamara Stefanovich, Christian Gerhaher, Tabea Zimmermann and Jörg Widmann as the outstanding soloists, come from Musica Viva, Munich’s annual new-music series, and bring together two of Rihm’s works from the beginning of the century with the Stabat Mater, for baritone and viola, of 2020.
They also demonstrate vividly how protean Rihm’s music can be, and are a reminder of how, throughout his career, his music has always been in a dialogue with the past, and of how he has never been afraid to use whatever musical language seemed appropriate, whether that was neo-romanticism, post-Bergian expressionism or the most fractured pointillism. Both Sphäre nach Studie (Sphere after Study) for six instrumentalists of 2002 and Male über Male (Paint on Paint) for clarinet and ensemble of 2008 are based on earlier pieces, for piano and clarinet respectively, to which Rihm added further layers of instrumental commentary while leaving the original solo lines intact; they are both spare, intensely concentrated works, in which each pitch seems carefully rationed. By contrast the setting of the Stabat Mater hymn, with the viola line wreathed around the baritone’s declamatory phrases, feels almost medieval in its unadorned rawness; even now, it seems, Rihm can still spring a surprise.
This week’s other pick
The second of BR Klassik’s Rihm releases this month is devoted to what is perhaps his best known ensemble work, Jagden und Formen. Like the disc above, it features members of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted this time by Franck Ollu. First performed in 1999, Jagden und Formen (Hunting and Forming) is a piece that Rihm revised three times, increasing its length each time. The BRSO plays what seems to be the definitive 2008 version, which lasts just over an hour. By comparison, Ensemble Modern’s fine recording of the 2002 score comes in at 10 minutes shorter. In either form, it’s one of Rihm’s greatest achievements, an unstoppable, ever-renewing stream of invention that seems to follow its own satisfying logic. It’s also phenomenally difficult to play, though you’d never guess it from the Munich performance.
