In his hometown of Ettlingen in Germany, composer Wolfgang Rihm passed away on July 27th after a long illness at the age of 72. He is considered the greatest living German composer.
Born in Karlsruhe in 1952, he was and is one of the most performed composers of our time. Rihm’s productivity is impressive. His oeuvre to date includes more than 450 works.
The statement at the top of the message is just a comment in an interview, but the underlying idea is crystal clear. Rihm wanted to write music that would carry the listener along and embrace him. In doing so, he turned away from the distance that was built into the aesthetics of Boulez and Stockhausen. It is difficult to give a brief description of his work. His musical expression and influences are too diverse in nature for that. Rihm’s oeuvre is not only very large, but also has a great inner coherence. Not only stylistically, but often literally: many works are a continuation of a previously composed thought. Also important is the notion that Rihm felt an explicit connection with composers from the past and did not, like Boulez and Stockhausen, feel the need to start over, to develop a new language.
On Wednesday 14th August we will be performing a lot of Rihm’s work. First in the Previous Century by Nilkaas Hoekstra at 7 pm and then in Thema from 8-10 pm by Erik Voermans. Three hours of compositions by this important composer on our Wolfgang Rihm evening.
