Rihm's Wolf Gang

[Mandryka]

Fremde Szenen is a set of three pieces for piano trio inspired in some way by Schumann. Here are the notes about it from the publishers




When I first started to explore it I listened to this recording by The Beethoven Trio, and was disappointed. It felt too safe. After listening to Fremde Szenen II I actually went to Schumann's op 11 to see how he deals with impulsiveness in music, and I said to myself that Schumann is a much better composer that Rihm.

Well a few days ago I got this, and my opinion changed



Trio Jean Paul make Rihm sound a much more impulsive and incandescent composer, and all the better for it. I like it.

From the Trio Jean Paul recording -- OCR  not proofed!

Wolfgang Rihm, from Fremde Blatter (uber Robert Schumann)

What is different about Schumann's music? That something is different different than usual we feel instinctively. Usual, those are the others, who are not bad, to be sure, but whose language does not usually dispense with familiar sounds and combinations even in remote intonations. Schumann's sounds are familiar to us today. of course, but we are not completely comfortable with them: that is: never completely, especially when they, these sounds, stand side by side, marking time alienated and trampling themselves into the ground. as in the last trio. Naturally. the fiery and precarious-passionate tone entirely typical of Schumann's early works is not so readily discernible in this late Trio as it is, for example, in the earlier D-Minor Trio, which of course also does not just move energetically, dynamically. This last Trio in G Minor, however, has a separate language that articulates music entirely appropriate to the condition and situation, and does not present it as a result of a processing of themes and motives. There are enough themes and motives, but then there is also
"a wide field" or a stream, and the themes and motives appear and disappear. There are no reference points. The music continuously creates itself, perhaps most conspicuously in the slow movement. in which it is difficult to discern a focal point. Everything flows and rushes, yet rests. The scherzo is the most distinct form in this series of structures, but its theme is above all: refused progress. Again and again, the circling, insisting form is forced to come near, is bent back to its beginning, and condemned to incessant rep-etition. The image of Sisyphus is certainly not too far away...

Music whose exertion is perceptible: And then? How does it continue? for it must. unswervingly, and even if it is only the motion type itself that sets itself into motion and stops and presses, pushes. and again losses something yes. what? music perhaps to the necessity of starting anew, of inces-santly having to start anew, from the bottom to the top, where there is again no goal. just the loss of the burden so strenuously heaved to the top. This is different than usual, where we could follow an existing path with a goal and purpose. The nowhereness, not so much the stylistic. but rather the nowhereness of the path, makes Schumann's music, above
all his late music. hardly tolerable for the (pre-)educated musical (pre-)understand-ing, that expects something appropriate to its education, but then encounters pre-conditions: unformed things. circling forms, latent developments, implication and ignis fatuus, which, all taken together, he the pre-educated must regard as failure. A love of Schumann's late work is not a priori some-thing outstanding, but he who so loves it experiences his own nature (strengthened, too, through the statements of qualified opponents). He becomes capable of giving a name to that which drives him thither.

The following is certain: the rejection of academic consistencies of any type, even that which understands itself as revolution-ary avant-gardistic and the sympathy with the conditional in art. Everything that is processed loses attractiveness and power in the face of that which is displayed, of the free growth of the fantasy. Since in Schumann's late work passages of relatively strong academic nature are especially conspicuous. something, for example, not at all present in Beethoven, who ultimately speaks so freely that no language can convey it but he speaks it intentionally free. whereas Schumann's free speech displays impulsive structures that, therefore, in Schumann's late work passages of relatively strong academic nature are especially conspicuous, may well lie on the great uncertainty that unrestrained speaking time and again imposes upon someone who so speaks, who finds himself, after all, alone. Time and again he must point out what is available as "ability," in the traditional sense, and accordingly as social reference. This is wearing at moments of despondency, makes one weak and susceptible for the momentar-ily afforded security of a generally accepted artistic language. But even these academic weak points are different in Schumann. They openly give information about their purpose: having to be makeshift bandages on irrepa-rable wounds. Through the circling, gloomy hopelessness of their diction, they once again act as expressive value, hectic spots, streaks of solidified stream. Parallels to physical conditions, to psychological events are not to be overheard.

The sound in the head —

The proofs of ability, however, are called for, namely by the inwrought demand of just that external musical life that Schumann nevertheless set out to represent again and again (for the last time, as director of music in Diisseldorf), and with which he could not
come to terms because he did not embody its hierarchical structure, and therefore could not represent it, contrarily structured as he was, and how his music sounds to us even today. Clara Schumann also demanded unconsciously? this proof of compositional ability. She revealed this indirectly, for example, in that, advised by the young aca-demics Joachim and Brahms, she believed it necessary to keep Schumann's Violin Concerto (with one of the most exciting slow movements that exists) under lock and key, certainly thinking that this would be of less harm to the madman than the release of what she and they saw as an incoherent product. Let us leave it with the observation: That which is freely formed and unexpected convention stand next to each other as if in quickly and restlessly furnished interi-ors that do not in any way invite to linger. Schumann's late work appears externally unfulfilled, uncomfortably constrained, and strange in its physiognomy. Similar to his own: with puffed up features, unclear profile, pouting mouth, heavy mat of hair, and swollen eyes.

It is surely false to play off things against another, which are not comparable (Schu-mann versus Brahms, for example). In Schumann's music, however, also in his late work, and there even radicalized I sense a connection (beyond Schoenberg's much-cited debt to the Brahmsian style) to us today, in our concept of a possible shaping of music. I have a deep sympathy for this type of contradictory production and person, more than for many a flashy success that only displays itself and allows no other way of looking at it.


About my own work:

In his younger years, Schumann occupied himself with the plan of a piano trio entitled "Scena" — Scene. The forest and children's and many other scenes of his oeuvre reveal an introvert who, under his own direction, gives life to the environment the world of nature or of man or perceives it as already put on the stage. This can even be under-stood to include the extroverted hysterical semantic content of the term "scene"; even if little happens outwardly, the inwardly tense dramatic household is overcrowded. In the second Strange Scene the first has an introductory character in this context I have attempted, among other things, to invent my personal portrait of Schumann and of his musical "handwriting." Not one measure
of Schumann is quoted, but his sound is present. The piece carries the subtitle "character piece." Through its stylistic strangeness and disorder, and the glimpses through the stylistic breaks to behind the style, the piece frequently makes the listener to a voluntary-involuntary voyeur: He has to be present when just this scene is "made." He observes strange scenarios that do not make any sense. Allusion, half-presenti-ment, and presumptions characterize the hysterical picture: Something is not right, and yet it flows and rages. Probably it is the stream, the river, which can never really be trusted. for in spite of all fluidity it is always a sort of shackle: In a river, a place is not possible; our motion is forced by its current, even if we give ourselves up controlled from without, swept along we do not move from the spot.
12 13





Wolfgang Rihm Strange Scenes I—Ill Essays for piano trio, first series (1982-1984)

The Strange Scenes are essays (i.e., attempts) for piano trio, and also: about "piano trio," that furniture-burdened for-mation which no longer exists, but which still stands around. Just as in abandoned rooms, the forbidden may take place here. We become witnesses to strange scenarios. At first, this is misleading. Some could be of the opinion that one is (unfortunately or finally) looking backwards. But since we know that a different way of speaking for example, the inflection of de Sade's Philosophy in the Boudoir in Heiner Miiller's Quartet does not mean that past times are being yearned for and are to be restoratively anchored in the present. Ever since we know this, we also know that a Schumann inflec-tion does not mean "we'll meet at the Coffee Tree! In original costumes!" (But musicians/ audiences are slow.) So strange and scenic, something chamber music has been not just since there were no more chambers. (Schumann's plan: a piano trio "Scena.") Almost every music is a strange scene that is experienced, whose execution we attend.

(How splendid the exaltations from close up.)

I. (1982) From the cold intervals, seek the hot sound. Fire in ice. For me, too, wonderful strange-ness at the venue of the premiere. Salzburg: The piece loitered about in a tumble, like Karl Valentin's pants (without Valentin). Everybody understood it for himself. It filled itself up with the various (mis- and other) understandings, and went away.

II. Character piece (1982-1983) Incessant, rapid, and tottering. The strange tongue speaks its own. Not one tone is quoted. One falls, plunges into the "tone." That which sounds like piano trio is weapon letter medical instrument virtuosity (of a struggle) exchange (portrait) excess relation operation

III. (1983-1984) Actually only notorious passages. Concentration and its loss.



Eckart Heiligers "Schumann is different. Different also than 'different.' He speaks music."

This statement by Wolfgang Rihm is possibly suited better than any other to describe the fascination that Schumann's music holds for us.

Music and language this, for our ensemble, central theme finds its correspondence in Schumann's idea of a "poetic music." The extremely speech-like, narrative nature of his music is however not to be under-stood here in the sense of the Baroque musical-rhetorical system of metaphori-cal expression, that is to say, as a tonal speech put together according to specific rules. (Although Schumann did create his own repertoire of figures with extramusical semantic elements, for example, the FAE motif, quotations of songs, etc.) His music does not attempt to be persuasive in the rhetorical sense, but rather speaks, often as if under duress, of the most intimate states of mind with a directness that makes one shudder.

In his Strange Scenes, Wolfgang Rihm has done nothing less than thematize the other-ness of Schumann's music, the composer's "strangeness/foreignness in the world," and
the inner strife and restlessness resulting from it. Not the unbroken musical form is the goal, but rather the conflict that itself creates its own dramatic form. In its undis-guised dramatic art and stirring emotionality, Rihm's music belongs to the most exciting that has been written for our formation in the recent past. It was therefore our special desire to juxtapose the works of these two composers on one recording.

For us, the study of the autographs repre-sents an important key to the understanding of the works. Whereas the situation con-cerning the Rihm sources is very clear, and merely a few inadvertent errors that occurred during the engraving of the printing plates could be ascertained, in Schumann's trios there are sometimes considerable devia-tions from the published editions. These, too, contradict each other in places, often raising new questions.

In many cases, this was apparently the result of Schumann's habit of repeatedly reworking daring first sketches as "works in progress," so to speak, in an attempt to adequately capture in writing the highly complex, imaginary tonal picture. The auto-graph versions therefore often possess the same "validity" as the later printed versions, frequently going even further in their uncompromisingness.

Thus, we noticed that Schumann had toned down and smoothed over many a roughness in the articulation and dynamics (and with that, also many a speech-like element) for the later printed version. In as far as it was not a question of obvious copying mistakes or inaccuracies, we decided in many cases in favor of the version in the autograph, which aimed toward a stronger dramatiza-tion. Unfamiliar is certainly our version of the second theme of the first movement of op. 80, which likewise stems from the auto-graph and appears nowhere in the printed edition (string accompaniment to the theme in the piano). Since no source can been found in which Schumann expressly rejects his original version, we decided in favor of it for musical reasons.

[Mandryka]

' The blast has arrived at the body': Wolfgang Rihm's creative explosion of 1981, Richard E. McGregor (professor, University of Cumbria)


http://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/3450/1/McGregor_TheBlastHasArrived.pdf

[Artem]

Thank you for this very much.

[vers la flamme]

What are some, two or three, works of Rihm that are worth checking out? He's written so much damn music, and my interest has been thoroughly piqued after hearing a couple of Lieder. It's interesting that he liked setting poetry of schizophrenics, which may seem to go in line with his interest in and identification with Robert Schumann.

Maybe pick up a disc of Lieder and go from there... But there's just so much music.

[Mandryka]

What are some, two or three, works of Rihm that are worth checking out? He's written so much damn music, and my interest has been thoroughly piqued after hearing a couple of Lieder. It's interesting that he liked setting poetry of schizophrenics, which may seem to go in line with his interest in and identification with Robert Schumann.

Maybe pick up a disc of Lieder and go from there... But there's just so much music.

If you have a taste for desert landscapes then try Anlitz (violin and piano.)

[petrarch]

What are some, two or three, works of Rihm that are worth checking out? He's written so much damn music, and my interest has been thoroughly piqued after hearing a couple of Lieder. It's interesting that he liked setting poetry of schizophrenics, which may seem to go in line with his interest in and identification with Robert Schumann.

Maybe pick up a disc of Lieder and go from there... But there's just so much music.

This, from earlier in the thread has a few recommendations that are still applicable:

I have a lot of Rihm. Tutuguri is awesome and I usually dislike contemporary vocal music. Morphonie is an essential piece, as it was the one that sort of launched his career when it was premiered in Donaueschingen. A few others that stand out are Kein Firmament, Ins Offene/sphere and, of course, the 3/5/8 quartets played by the Arditti. You also won't go wrong with any of the SWR/Hanssler CDs.

Since then, I got quite a few discs of Rihm's vocal works, and the Lesser/Lesser, Prégardien/Mauser and Salter/Wambach discs were pleasant surprises, as I am not a huge fan of vocal music later than the Renaissance.

EDIT: I found it particularly interesting to compare the soprano vs baritone renditions of Lenz-Fragmente between Lesser/Lesser and Falk/Schleiermacher.

[vers la flamme]

If you have a taste for desert landscapes then try Anlitz (violin and piano.)

Listened to a few minutes of Anlitz and liked what I heard. Found it on disc, brand new, for three dollars. Thanks!

[Mandryka]

This, from earlier in the thread has a few recommendations that are still applicable:

Since then, I got quite a few discs of Rihm's vocal works, and the Lesser/Lesser, Prégardien/Mauser and Salter/Wambach discs were pleasant surprises, as I am not a huge fan of vocal music later than the Renaissance.

EDIT: I found it particularly interesting to compare the soprano vs baritone renditions of Lenz-Fragmente between Lesser/Lesser and Falk/Schleiermacher.

It would be nice to get to know Jakob Lenz but I can't find a video with English subtitles - do you know if there is one?

One major problem with Rihm lieder is getting the poems in English. I intend to upload some here and I make a plea for anyone who has any translations to do likewise. It could be a really valuable resource as the streaming recordings often don't come with booklets.

[petrarch]

It would be nice to get to know Jakob Lenz but I can't find a video with English subtitles - do you know if there is one?

I have never seen one; I have the recent DVD released on Alpha and the booklet doesn't have the text.

EDIT: I misread what you wrote. The Alpha DVD does have subtitles. What it doesn't have is the booklet with the full text and translations side-by-side.

Also, keep in mind that Jakob Lenz is about Lenz, but the Lieder are on poems by Lenz and are otherwise completely unrelated works.

One major problem with Rihm lieder is getting the poems in English. I intend to upload some here and I make a plea for anyone who has any translations to do likewise. It could be a really valuable resource as the streaming recordings often don't come with booklets.

I'll check the CDs I have and will scan the booklets if they include the translated text.

EDIT: All but the Prégardien/Mauser have the full text with translation.

[CRCulver]

I have never seen one; I have the recent DVD released on Alpha and the booklet doesn't have the text.

This is the first I have heard of this release, so thanks for making me aware of it. But I am appalled that in 2019 a label released a plain low-definition DVD instead of a Blu-ray. The DVD release of Rihm's Oedipus opera a few years back was understandable because that video was originally shot in low-definition for West German television in the 1980s, but what is Alpha's excuse for this 2015 production of Jakob Lenz?

[Mandryka]

This looks fun, whatever they're singing about

https://www.youtube.com/v/eyq37usCwas

[petrarch]

One major problem with Rihm lieder is getting the poems in English. I intend to upload some here and I make a plea for anyone who has any translations to do likewise. It could be a really valuable resource as the streaming recordings often don't come with booklets.

I just found this:

https://www.lieder.net/get_settings.html?ComposerId=2336

[Mandryka]

Listened to a few minutes of Anlitz and liked what I heard. Found it on disc, brand new, for three dollars. Thanks!

There's a character who goes by the name of Scarecrow who reviews regularly for Amazon, he's a pianist/composer/"philosopher"  who's been on the edges of the avant garde for years and years, worked with Cage and Shapey, part of the world which revolved around Cardew and Feldman centred in the Almeida Theatre in Islington  London in the 90s . Here's his review of Antlitz. I love him.

This is another reposeful Rihm, the flipside of the "gods", the" new gods" from his more explosive, brutal music, under the signs of post-modernity.; There is still that "otherness", something that wasn't realize in a prior time that now has a durational frame given to be fruitful. We find more of the Nietzsche "Apollo" here than ostentations of Dionysus. "geister Raum", free spaces, spirits, hovering round. The piano for instance utilizes the "sostenuto" pedal, that's where you silently depress keys, usually the lower end of the piano, and put down the middle peddle, simultaneously, you then must keep holding this middle pedal down. The resonances are cleaner, more refined, more ethereal. Here we find very obvious "tonal", what has been called post-electronic tonality", freely deployed disbursed, resonant tones, like all the white piano keys. We find that here in the piano, with the violin, playing very lyrical plaintive melos. The piano with this "sostenuto pedal" is kind of "fluffy", There are no total convulsions, here, no Dopplegang, double-over gestures"gestes", the music here is peaceful resolute "entschlossenes. There are "new gods" here ones that perhaps were previously concealed, who were turned away in the past. serenely released "gelassenes"

There's a recording which is dedicated to this difficult, sparse, fluid, quiet chamber style of Rihm, this




https://www.discogs.com/Wolfgang-Rihm-Image-Echo-Bilder-Echo/release/11658159

You can hear it all on YouTube.

[vers la flamme]

Thoughts on this?



I picked it up at a record store semi recently (for two dollars) and forgot about it. It comes with a huge booklet. I know nothing about the music. Seems to mostly date from the '70s and '80s.

Edit to add: Dunkles Spiel sounds great. Very primal, almost ritualistic. I still don't really understand what Rihm's music is all about, but I generally like what I'm hearing...

[Mandryka]

This looks fun, whatever they're singing about

https://www.youtube.com/v/eyq37usCwas

This is very good. It's enough to make me want to start going to operas again.

[Mandryka]

Kein Firmament

I like this, I hadn't heard of it before you brought it up the other day, I like the spaciousness of it, the silences. It's like Cage, things just happen for no reason but somehow when they all come together it's music!  Thanks.

[Mandryka]

https://www.youtube.com/v/MV_IPkgY-qg

A performance of Brahms' requiem with two pieces by Rihm in homage to the music, Das Lesen der Schrift. As far as I can see it's the only way to hear the Rihm.

[Mandryka]

The 11th quartet is for me one of the most challenging pieces of music I've heard in a long time. There's a review on Amazon US which basically says it's a retreat from the avant garde, but I don't think that's a helpful, or indeed a meaningful thing to say. While much of the music does not have the ecstatically jagged contours which characterised the post war avant garde, it still challenges older notions of coherence and is still overflowing with expressive immediacy. In this music, you feel that anything is possible.

The reason I find it challenging is that it always feels in an unstable state,  and that makes it maybe the least comforting pieces of music I've ever heard. It's awkward and precarious - as if constantly poised on a cantilever ready to tumble disastrously. The amazon review also claims that it's a Holocaust memorial piece, so maybe that comfort would be inappropriate. It has taken me a long time to be able to listen to it in fact - my first reaction was complete rejection, repulsion. I  could not say of this music "I like it." 


There are gestures to existing musics of course. I can't identify which composers are alluded to though, maybe a snip of the cavatina of op 130 by the composer who, like Voldemort and Sauron, does not need to be named. But I'm not sure.

I think the performance and sound do not do justice to the music. It's listenable, that's the best I can say. It was created  by Takacs Quartet apparently, but I can find no trace of the performance.

Booklet is here

https://www.naxosmusiclibrary.com/sharedfiles/booklets/WER/booklet-WER6756-2.pdf

[Mandryka]

The 11th quartet is for me one of the most challenging pieces of music I've heard in a long time. There's a review on Amazon US which basically says it's a retreat from the avant garde, but I don't think that's a helpful, or indeed a meaningful thing to say. While much of the music does not have the ecstatically jagged contours which characterised the post war avant garde, it still challenges older notions of coherence and is still overflowing with expressive immediacy. In this music, you feel that anything is possible.

The reason I find it challenging is that it always feels in an unstable state,  and that makes it maybe the least comforting pieces of music I've ever heard. It's awkward and precarious - as if constantly poised on a cantilever ready to tumble disastrously. The amazon review also claims that it's a Holocaust memorial piece, so maybe that comfort would be inappropriate. It has taken me a long time to be able to listen to it in fact - my first reaction was complete rejection, repulsion. I  could not say of this music "I like it." 


There are gestures to existing musics of course. I can't identify which composers are alluded to though, maybe a snip of the cavatina of op 130 by the composer who, like Voldemort and Sauron, does not need to be named. But I'm not sure.

I think the performance and sound do not do justice to the music. It's listenable, that's the best I can say. It was created  by Takacs Quartet apparently, but I can find no trace of the performance.

Booklet is here

https://www.naxosmusiclibrary.com/sharedfiles/booklets/WER/booklet-WER6756-2.pdf

There's a live performance of this, Stuttgart, on symphonyshare. Sounds good.

[Mandryka]

Rihmers may want to try this new CD which has a new song cycle - Vermischter Traum.