Heidelberg String Quartet Festival honors Wolfgang Rihm – culture

When the moderator Oliver Wille asks about the possible right or wrong when playing Wolfgang Rihm’s quartets, Rihm counters with a laugh: “I’m not the policeman of my grades!” The composer Wolfgang Rihm, who will celebrate his 70th birthday in March, then paints a vivid picture of the fate of his works since they have been performed: they fare like old sperm whales, they are covered with the scars and fissures of multiple occupation with them. This also includes reception styles that could and probably should change over time. New sounds in themselves are by no means art, rather the decisive factor is: “What follows and from what?”

Wille is a chamber music professor in Hanover and director of the oldest German chamber music festival in Hitzacker an der Elbe. He also plays the violin in the world-famous Kuss Quartet and also manages the Joseph Joachim Violin Competition. Apart from the great quartet performances, his conversation with Rihm was the focal point of this year’s four days Heidelberg Quartet Festival. This special festival for string quartets has existed since 2006 with its permanent congregation, which was not deterred by Corona conditions or by the journey to the “prosaic” (Rihm) Rudolf-Wild-Halle in Eppelheim this time.

John Zorn’s “Memento Mori” is a shrill arc of confusion and attacks

After the Minguet Quartet, which was the first to record all 13 Rihm quartets and is considered a specialist team, had to cancel due to a Covid case, five ensembles remained. The award-winning American JACK Quartet was founded in 2005 and is primarily dedicated to new and cutting-edge music. Precision and virtuosity are self-evident, plus a “dry” sound character in the best sense of the word, which does not allow any blurring or softening. They boldly juxtaposed Rihm’s 3rd Quartet “Im Innersten” with arrangements of music from the 14th and 16th centuries, when modern stringed instruments did not yet exist and people experimented so irritatingly with fifth tones and shifts in rhythm that one felt like losing one’s footing . In addition, John Zorn’s “Memento Mori” from 1992, a shrill audio picture arc of crossfades, confusion and attacks.

The Quatuor Danel has been around since 1991 and has been successful worldwide in a repertoire ranging from Joseph Haydn to the latest music. The ensemble playing is characterized by drive, joy of playing and curiosity, sometimes with a touch of improvisation and the joy of taking risks. With the brilliant clarinettist Thorsten Johanns, they unfolded Rihm’s “Four Studies for a Clarinet Quintet” as a compelling path through an almost bucolic, soft and wide landscape, which casually reminded of the clarinet quintets by Mozart, Brahms or Max Reger. Unfortunately, the “Danels” had to pass because one of their musicians also tested positive.

This has been making music since 2009 Goldmund Quartet, perfectly balanced in terms of sound, always fine and cultivated in tone, excellent in transparency and refined in the sound mixture. The “Goldmunds” are currently allowed to play the four Stradivarius instruments that Niccolò Paganini, the violinist of all violinists, once bought for himself. They managed Rihm’s “Grave – in memoriam Thomas Kakuska”, dedicated to the deceased violist of the legendary Alban Berg Quartet, oppressively abysmal to the ashen. In contrast, the 4th quartet acted as an energetic and emphatic departure to new shores.

That leaves the two youngest formations, the Adelphi Quartet, founded in 2017, and the Leonkoro Quartet, which started in 2019. For all their intensity and passion, the “Adelphis” belong more to those who don’t bring anything to market in a striking way, whether they play Robert Schumann’s Op. 41, 1 play light and airy or short Rihm pieces such as the curious “Selbsthenker” after Friedrich Nietzsche, the “Fetzen 1 and 2” or his 2nd Quartet, always considered, somewhat introverted, but with a lot of humour. The “Leonkoros”, on the other hand, draw from the full of youthful joy in sound, fiery vitality and rousing offensive urge in Rihm’s 1st and 9th quartets as well as in Schumann’s op. 41.3 or Antonin Dvorák’s op. 106.

The power and effect of the Rihm pieces in their diverse facets also surprisingly changed access to older music. Suddenly one heard the juxtaposition of “extremely hot and extremely cold sounds” (Rihm) in Beethoven or Schubert, in Schumann or even Dvorák, the intensity of the contrasts, the “passing on of energy” within the ensembles, the tension between tonal vertical and melodic Horizontal.

The composer of 13 weighty quartets and a number of short pieces sits in the audience and listens as his pieces become immediate reality, only to fade away immediately with the last note. This was particularly challenging for the musicians, because there is nothing bigger than performing a piece in front of the one who invented it. It was a magical situation, the primal scene of the musical tripod: someone composed, others play what has been composed, and people are listening, including the creator of the piece. Everyone was tense, but Wolfgang Rihm remained calm and curious, enjoying the re-encountering of his own pieces: “You are now listening to very old music, 52 years old!” he calls out to the audience at the opening. After the concert with three pieces from different creative phases, he points out that one has now got to know three different composers, so to speak.

You get ideas when you already have them, says Rihm

“Music only exists when it is played!” It’s not an object, you can’t look at it, you can’t touch it, and yet it’s physically present at the moment of the performance, only to then immediately disappear again. The mighty man marvels happily at this strange creature that can never be arrested. But that is immediately present again in the performance. Oliver Wille asks when the best ideas come? Rihm replied: “It’s best if you already have some!” The mix of spirit and wit lifts everyone in the room.

Open detailed view

Nothing scholarly is dealt with, but Rihm encircles himself from the moment, sometimes ironically, sometimes thoughtfully, sometimes pointedly: He is one of the few who still composes himself, writes everything down by hand and doesn’t use any writing programs. He works intuitively and is often surprised himself at what is created and where the piece is taking him. “I’m a kind of seeker and gardener, a tracker and tracker.” When does he know that a piece is over? “You feel you don’t know when it’s over.” You have to face the “unpredictability of the material”.

Such formulations captivate in the mixture of openness and mystery. Nevertheless, everyone suspects that no matter how poetic and original language images and words can be used to get at the music, it eludes such verbalizations. You have to experience it, preferably with the composer and the players in the same room.