Crítica de la Revista Gramophone.
Composer or Director:
Alban Berg
Wolfgang Rihm
Genre:
Orchestral
Label:
DG
Magazine Review Date:
1/1993
437 093-2GH
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, 'To the memory of an angel'
Alban Berg Composer
Anne-Sophie Mutter (vn)
James Levine Conductor
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Gesungene Zeit
Wolfgang Rihm Composer
Anne-Sophie Mutter (vn)
James Levine Conductor
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
DG's commitment to new repertoire is in itself cause for celebration; this is the third time they have given us a new concertante work alongside a major twentieth-century concerto (previous issues were Lutoslawski/Stravinsky, 2/89 and Moret/Bartok, 11/91).
The 40-year-old Wolfgang Rihm has a considerable reputation in his native Germany and specialist collectors may have come across his expressionistic opera Jakob Lenz (at one time available on LP from German Harmonia Mundi). Time chanted, a 24-minute piece composed 1991–2, is a study in sonority, using the small orchestra at first as a kind of resonating chamber for the violin (the composer calls it a Doppelganger), then gradually introducing more aggressive ideas.
There are many helpful points of contact with the Berg—wide-intervalled intersecting lines extensive use of solo strings from the orchestra the sense that the listener's trust has been won before the most challenging ideas materialize. Every note, from the violin's opening F sharp to its concluding B a third above the last note of the Berg, has been weighed in the imagination and given time to register.
This is not the kind of sacerdotal neo-sensualism you might associate with Gorecki, Tavener or Part, however; the nearest I can get to a stylistic orientation is to suggest that it is a cross between Takemitsu and Bernd Alois Zimmermann.
Rihm's approach to the medium was directly inspired by aspects of Anne-Sophie Mutter's playing: ''precisely in remoteness her playing is richest and most alive''. No surprise then to hear poetry and conviction throughout the performance; and again DG's beautifully judged recording enhances the experience. Had I read the composer's references to ''the vibrating of the ray of time, the energy which collects in the note in order to generate the next note'' before hearing the music, I might have suspected pretentiousness, reading them afterwards they seemed no more than a precise encapsulation of its special atmosphere. I want to come back to this piece a few more times before pronouncing further, but it is already saying a lot that Rihm's work is not embarrassed in the company of the Berg.'
Nació el 13 de marzo de 1952.
