Untitled (Fifth String Quartet, in One Movement) - Arditti String Quartet

Wolfgang Rihm: String Quartets - Im Innersten (Third String Quartet, in 6 Movements) / Eighth String Quartet (in One Movement) / Untitled (Fifth String Quartet, in One Movement) - Arditti String Quartet

Arditti String Quartet
Wolfgang Rihm: String Quartets - Im Innersten (Third String Quartet, in 6 Movements) / Eighth String Quartet (in One Movement) / Untitled (Fifth String Quartet, in One Movement) - Arditti String Quartet
Genre: Classical

Track Listings (9) - Disc #1
1. String Quartet No. 3 ('Im Innersten'): I. schroff
2. String Quartet No. 3 ('Im Innersten'): II
3. String Quartet No. 3 ('Im Innersten'): III
4. String Quartet No. 3 ('Im Innersten'): IV. ?u?erst gedehnt
5. String Quartet No. 3 ('Im Innersten'): V.
6. String Quartet No. 3 ('Im Innersten'): Zwischenspiel, senza tempo
7. String Quartet No. 3 ('Im Innersten'): VI.
8. String Quartet No. 8
9. String Quartet No. 5

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CD Details

All Artists: Arditti String Quartet
Title: Wolfgang Rihm: String Quartets - Im Innersten (Third String Quartet, in 6 Movements) / Eighth String Quartet (in One Movement) / Untitled (Fifth String Quartet, in One Movement) - Arditti String Quartet
Members Wishing: 2
Total Copies: 0
Label: Disques Montaigne
Release Date: 4/26/1994
Genre: Classical
Style: Chamber Music
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPCs: 093046920128, 3298497820011

Synopsis

Amazon.com

Wolfgang Rihm is one of Germany's most prominent and prolific living composers, having written for nearly every genre from chamber operas, to symphonies, to songs. But what is most characteristic about Rihm's music is that it is extremely difficult characterize. With discernible influences including serialism, romantic harmony, and a reduced language similar to that of the late Luigi Nono, Rihm is able to integrate these elements into his music to suit his compositional needs. This disc of three string quartets is an excellent introduction to Rihm's music because the three works span a period in Rihm's career where one can see the transition from one style to the next, culminating in the extremely engaging Eighth String Quartet. In the hands of a lesser composer, the use of preexisting styles can deteriorate into shallow and ironic post-modern pastiche, but for Rihm it only adds to the richness and depth of his music. --Kirk Noreen

CD Reviews

Not my favorite Rihm,great Arditti playing,balanced storms

04/09/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Germany has always had a plurality of artisitic styles and musical languages. It is only now with the advent postmodernity that these different expressive strains are being encouraged. And Rihm represents the reactionary trend away from the vigours of modernity without really being anti-modernist, like having your cake and eating it to. Rihm's creativity tapped into Neo-Expressionism, long a respected expressive path in Germany dating back to the early years of this century. These "Quartets" here are excellent examples of Rihm's musical language, however I prefer his "Symphonies" and "Operas" where his musically graphic,brutal and impassioned imagination can run wild. The "Quartets" by contrast are more introspective, The "Third Quartet" with its heavenly length and ideology reflecting a "life-to death" lifeworld perspective is like a modern Grimm's Tale The Arditti are well suited for this music knowing the full compass of the extended world of strings from the depths of darkness,their lower strings, to spiky screeching upper registers are all visited for these abstract dramas. The Arditti in a cross-handed way are not an impassioned bunch,so the music has an expressive distance which serves Rihm well oddly enough. Too much bursting irrationality would mar his work. You always need a balance and a vision of where the excesses in the music occur. In listening you might catch fragments or suggestions of the pained lyricism of Schubert,or the darker moments in Mahler. But Rihm is on top, you always know where he begins and the others leave off, not every good postmodernist can say that with conviction."