Rihm's Wolf Gang

Started by snyprrr, March 12, 2009, 08:35:40 PM

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Mandryka

#240
Very much enjoying the Klangbeschreibung II
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka



I'm not so keen on the performance of Duomonolog here, it seems too calm and sweet, and somehow the transitions make the music sound like a random juxtaposition of episodes rather than the development of a thought. I have a recording which is more biting and agressive which I much prefer, I don't know who's playing.


By the way, a bit of gossip about the stars. Is it true that Friedrich Gauwerky is Rihm's partner? Just something someone said to me in a conversation.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

CRCulver

Quote from: Mandryka on July 14, 2022, 12:09:21 AM
Is it true that Friedrich Gauwerky is Rihm's partner? Just something someone said to me in a conversation.

If that were true, strange bedfellows: the representative composer of 1970s New Simplicity with a cellist who has performed the daunting New Complexity music of Ferneyhough and Klaus K. Hübler.

Mandryka

#243


https://open.spotify.com/track/3i9kvst0lN2eUULowPYiUS

This one has an amusing  Wolfli-Lieder - the singer, I'm not sure who he is, I think Richard Salter, is good I think. Romantic Russian style Rihm. Rihmorgsky.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#244


Really impressive, and I mean really impressive, performance of the music for three stringed instruments. Josjem Ter Haar I know, but I've never come across The Netherlands String Trio before - this appears to be their only recording. Shame that.

The music is, I think, a high point of Rihm's 1970s/1980s work. There may even be moments in it where time stands still - more about that later maybe.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka



Oh, and while I'm hear, let me make a positive mention for Erscheinung I and II from The Schoenberg Ensemble.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

From  John Warnaby, Musica Nova 1990 (Tempo Dec 1990) -- comments inter alia on Kein Firmament and related music.



On the other hand, the music of Wolfgang
 Rihm will invariably benefit from repeated
 performance. It has been assumed that Rihm's
 vast output has entailed emphasizing quantity, as
 opposed to quality, but the dozen works included
 in the Festival, among them five or six major
 scores, exemplified a high level of inspiration.
 Equally impressive was the range of styles
 encompassed by his music, without sacrificing his
 creative identity. The problem seems to be that
 Rihm's output does not fit comfortably into
 recognizable categories; coupled with the fact
 that our notorious insularity prevents us from
 coming to terms with recent cultural develop-
 ments in Europe. The sporadic attention paid to
 Rihm shows that our parochial attitudes are not
 restricted to composers who are regarded as
 disturbing or subversive.
 Perhaps the most significant aspect of this
 survey of Rihm's achievement was the extent to
 which he represents a European, rather than a
 specifically German sensibility. During the
 course of his lecture, he was asked how he coped
 with the legacy of German music, to which he
 responded that neither Debussy nor Varese
 belonged to the German tradition, while
 Schoenberg was Austrian. The point is that he
 regards tradition as worldwide, so that his
 approach to style and form is not specifically
 indebted to either Austro-German symphonism,
 nor the recent neo-Wagnerian constructions of
 Stockhausen, even though his admiration for the
 latter is considerable. Thus Kein Firmament, for
 ensemble (1988), is a substantial work in which
 the influence of Cage is embodied in the
 compositional process, pages of the score being
 shuffled in an unpredictable fashion to avoid any
 suggestion of continuity. Ultimately, the
 influence is expressed in terms of the interplay
 between sound and silence, but Rihm's indivi-
 duality is still evident in the sounds themselves,
 which tend to be strongly accented, and often
 emphasize extremes of loudness or softness.
 Likewise, Cuts and Dissolves (1977) and the Viola
 Concerto (1983) draw heavily on stylistic features ssociated with the transition from 'romanticism'
 to 'modernism', but juxtaposed in a manner that
 is unique to Rihm. Other works are less
 controversial in that they do not rely on such
 stylistic allusions. In Umsungen, Nietzsche's text is
 set in a remarkably consistent style, which is also
 a feature of the new work In's Offene..., which
 received its first performance in the concluding
 concert. Based on a phrase of H6lderlin, which
 neatly encapsulates the composer's notion of
 open-ended structures, the work enhances the
 timeless quality of high-pitched bell sounds by
 using the entire concert space, thereby creating a
 remarkably unified score
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#248
A fremde szenen II here, the disc is streaming

https://elusivedisc.com/the-abegg-trio-abegg-trio-series-vol-20-piano-trioscd/

The CD contains a Killmayer trio which is very fine. Killmayer seems to me a composer close to Rihm, at least the Rihm of the past 30 years.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#249
Atlitz for violin and piano was the seed for Antlitz with overwriting for cello and piano. Both astonishing examples of Adorno's Musique Informelle - the form growing entirely from the music rather than a preexisting grid. Both lovely IMO, especially the cello one, which is fluid, and makes very effective use of the Rihmian disorientation strategy of juxtaposing loud and quiet.  Both here - this is a satisfying Rihm CD

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#250
The final movement of Rihm's 3rd quartet has been associated with all sorts of strange sounding ideas - abstruse ideas about foetal hearing in Plato, for example. Putting all that aside, it is one hell of a piece, and I'd say it takes music to new and exciting places. I have three performances, Minguet, Arditti and Doelen. IMO Minguet have the measure of it.

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

#251
Quote from: Mandryka on December 19, 2022, 06:25:52 AM

Really impressive, and I mean really impressive, performance of the music for three stringed instruments. Josjem Ter Haar I know, but I've never come across The Netherlands String Trio before - this appears to be their only recording. Shame that.

The music is, I think, a high point of Rihm's 1970s/1980s work. There may even be moments in it where time stands still - more about that later maybe.


And if you pay attention and pump up the volume, you hear the Janacek in it - only noticed this afternoon!
Back to this this morning, it is even better than in memory. This is a good place for someone who's curious about Rihm's instrumental music to start with.

Hard to find but streaming - you have to search under the name of one of the trio's members - Josje Ter Haar.

She has recorded some other things, including the strange Feldman Trio - I will listen to that recording again soon, see if I can make more out of it than before.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

Quote from: Mandryka on June 08, 2023, 12:28:37 AMAnd if you pay attention and pump up the volume, you hear the Janacek in it - only noticed this afternoon!
Back to this this morning, it is even better than in memory. This is a good place for someone who's curious about Rihm's instrumental music to start with.

Hard to find but streaming - you have to search under the name of one of the trio's members - Josje Ter Haar.

She has recorded some other things, including the strange Feldman Trio - I will listen to that recording again soon, see if I can make more out of it than before.

And if you listen carefully and pump up the volume you hear the Janacek in it - never noticed that till this afternoon!
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

According to Yves Knockert (n the book on Chiffre), the piano solo in Chiffre V is influenced by Debussy's ideas about  rhythm.

Can someone explain Debussy's ideas about rhythm?



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo-A4s7EBPU&ab_channel=EnsembleMusikfabrik-Topic
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

relm1

#254
Quote from: Mandryka on September 02, 2023, 02:45:14 AMAccording to Yves Knockert (n the book on Chiffre), the piano solo in Chiffre V is influenced by Debussy's ideas about  rhythm.

Can someone explain Debussy's ideas about rhythm?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo-A4s7EBPU&ab_channel=EnsembleMusikfabrik-Topic

It's the idea of flowing rhythm.  He said: "Rhythms cannot be contained within bars. It is nonsense to speak of 'simple' and 'composed' time. There should be an interminable flow of them both without seeking to bury the rhythmic patterns." 

In conventional music, the time falls within bars with strong and weak beats.  So in 4/4 time, beat 1 and 3 are strong, beat 2 and 4 are weak.  Debussy is not only challenging that convention but abandoning the concept of a downbeat (the strongest beat 1 in 4/4) with melodic anticipation or sustains (melody and harmony might come before the downbeat or after) and also going more free form ideas of rhythmic relationships to the bars and beats.  Other contemporary examples of this would be in Thomas Ades Asyla. 


Here, the entire orchestra is off beat.  Only the conductor is conducting in strict time.  To me, that is an extension of the Debussy rhythmic idea.  Like around 23:00 minutes in, if you looked at the score, almost every instrument is playing extremely precisely but their entrances might be a 32nd note before/after the beat and the player next to them maybe 16th note later...for the whole orchestra.  It's an interesting approach of extremely precise playing made to sound random and imprecise.  Finally crafted controlled chaos. 

Mandryka

Thanks @relm1 - it's just a bit hard for me to relate this to the solo in Chiffra V.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

Listen to the way the rhythm in Les fées sont d'exquises danseuses - without repeated patterns of strong and weak beats, in constant evolution, especially towards the end, in the last minute or so.



And then to the piano solo in Chiffre v




 
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