Search - Rihm, Arditti String :: Wolfgang Rihm: String Quartets 3, 8 & 5

As if Brahms had lived into the Twentieth Century. . .

scarecrow | Chicago, Illinois United States | 12/27/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Wolfgang Rihm has developed an impressive musical language,brutally emotive, grotesque, overly dramatic,extreme,he knows the modernist language of extended timbre very well, especially here for strings, the Am Steg, at the bridge, snarls, gut pumps,pizzocati of sounds,scraps, tortured screams , like fingernails and eyeballs on the blackboard.The violin bow is equally an instrument of miltant form. Conceptually as well he makes the the rigours, the more intellectual currents of post-modernity work for him,although all his music adheres to conservative structural traditions. He's not afraid of overtaxing his welcome once you accept this musical offering, nor being predictable and obvious when it serves musical and emotive ends.The Third Quartet, (Arditti has shopped this around the world), it is of Mahlerian lengths with unabashedly lyrical touching moments after the opening abbatoir of rough,gruff overly violent stuff, double stopped attacks,breaks,hammerings,convulsive melodies and anxiety smears of the strings. It is incredible the shear amount of sound Arditti is able to summon for this symphony for string quartet. It is a relatively early work from the Seventies, when Rihm was just beginning to be known. The fact that since that time he as ascending quite handsomely in the world of the theatre and opera is obvious. This musical speaks and searchings for deep,dark,distrubing imagery. The Fifth Quartet, in one movement without a programmatic title is suppose to suggest a world of pure abstraction, but it is not,it is a world of obvious abstraction,where we hear locomotive like summoning,stopping qickly for sharp contrast, it may remind you of a torture session,well beyond the Expressionism of Beckmann,Nolde,or Kiefer.Arditti simply plays the hell out of this music,it is a match made in Hell,or Heaven."

A survey of the quicksilver Rihm across phases

R. Hutchinson | a world ruled by fossil fuels and fossil minds | 07/04/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Rihm has always been an expressionist, a musical anarchist, pugnaciously avoiding any sort of system, and viewing the process of composing as more important than a finished structure.



What we have here are three distinct visions from three phases in Rihm's development, in Quartets No. 3, 5 and 8. No. 3 juxtaposes harsh avant-garde sounds with Romantic passages, and is from the 1970s when Rihm was exploring his own version of "polystylism." It has grown on me over time, but I prefer the similar but more concentrated No. 4. No. 5, from the early 1980s, is all harsh momentum and seems to reflect the anti-nuclear urgency of the times. It is the best of the three quartets performed here by the Ardittis, relentless and exhausting. No. 8, from the glasnost-era late '80s, is very much influenced by Lachenmann and by Nono's 1980 String Quartet, low-volume and fragmented.



All of Rihm's quartets have now been recorded on Col Legno by the Minguet Quartet. Volume One (2003) includes No.s 1 -- 4, Volume Two (2004), which I consider the best, contains No.s 5 & 6, Volume Three (2005) includes No.s 7, 8 & 9, and Volume Four (2006) contains No.s 10, 12 and the Quartettstudie. This Montaigne disc, therefore, spans the first three discs of the Col Legno cycle, and might be seen as an overview, or as part of an Arditti Quartet collection. I would recommend the Col Legno Volume Two with Quartets No. 5 and 6, though, if you want to investigate Rihm's string quartets, especially if this Montaigne disc is now unavailable. I would give this Montaigne/Arditti/Rihm Disc 4 stars if I reviewed it today because the compositions have grown on me, but I think the programming of the Col Legno cycle, which groups the quartets together by period, is preferable.



I have come to see Rihm as one of THE 12 BEST LATE 20th/21ST CENTURY COMPOSERS (see my list). For more recordings and reviews, see my WOLFGANG RIHM: A LISTENER'S GUIDE list."

A fine example of Rihm's unique brand of charged expressioni

Christopher Culver | 04/06/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Wolfgang Rihm has, along with Lachenmann, established himself as one of Germany's most prominent composers, with over 300 works, frequent performances, and a steady stream of commissions. Among his earliest successes were his string quartets, which the Arditti Quartet took up in the 1980s and toured around the world. On this Montaigne disc, the original and the reissue of which are both now sadly out of print, we are treated to three of this.



At the beginning of the 1970s Darmstadt modernism was no longer seen as the future of music, but no one was sure where to go next. Rihm burst on to the scene with a fresh new style that might be called musical expressionism, as if painting his pieces with a bold series of individual strokes, some large, some small, but everywhere cherishing the moment instead of some eggheaded overriding structure. His credo was "Music must be full of emotions, the emotions full of complexity".



An excellent example of this fresh thinking is the String Quartet No. 3 "Im Innersten" (1976), surely one of the greatest string quartets of the 20th century. It begins with thorny, angular writing that immediately brings all the instrumentalists into play. The very form initially seems to be a furious hunt for a stable form, a notion Rihm was to greatly elaborate on in later works. And yet, soon the music goes from a loud flurry to a slow, melacholy Romantic passage. Throughout the work Rihm keeps this interplay of a new impressionism and references to old music, as if to state that, however uncertain the future of music is, it must be aware of the past. The ending of this quartet is masterful. One can hardly believe it to be the work of a composer only a couple of years out of school.



The String Quartet No. 5 "Ohne Titel" (1981-83) lacks the clear dramatic arc of the Third, but delights the listener with its fireworks of extended techniques. I especially love the passage where the violins play a long tremolo at the upper extremes of their range while the cello makes jabs here and there.



The String Quartet No. 8 (1987-88) is a great departure. While the first two on this disc are generally quite busy and rich in material, here we mainly have long silences shattered by simple explosive gestures, rather like the late works of Luigi Nono. In the first part of the piece, when the performers are most active they merely repeat the same sharp gesture again and again, and the more varied business of the second half constantly risks falling back into silence. There's even avant-garde techniques like the rustling of papers.



While Jagden Und Formen might be the a more accessible inroads to Rihm's work, I'd still very much recommend this disc to lovers of 20th-century music. The Third especially merits becoming familiar with."