WOLFGANG RIHM (b.1952): Verwandlungen 1-4.

Catalogue Number: 11M091
Label: Hännsler Classic
Reference: CD 93.263
Format: CD
Price: $18.98
Description: As in much of Rihm's recent music, this ongoing series of orchestral pieces exemplify the ideology-free, emotionally expressive above all idiom that the composer has increasingly adopted since the 1990s. In practice, this results in a vocabulary that derives a great deal from late Mahler and early Schoenberg in terms of harmony -a contemporary rediscovery, in a sense, of Romantic ideals. Rihm frequently speaks of his recent music in terms of emotion and eroticism rather than espousing particular technical devices or compositional systems. The constant flow of organic ideas also recalls Sibelius, but it is to Mahler that the ear's memory is constantly drawn; sweeping string melodic figures, military drums intruding on a pastoral landscape, suggestions of peasant ländler, apocalyptic outbursts of rage and sudden triumphant (and unexpectedly tonal) resolutions to tense musical argument. Rihm's overall vocabulary is less explicitly tonal than his models of a century ago, but the underlying sensibility is remarkably similar, and equally emotionally cathartic. Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra; Christian Arming, Matthias Pintscher.