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String Quartets
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| The string quartet takes a prominent place among Wolfgang Rihm’s immense output. Already in his earliest compositional phase, at the age of 14, 15, 16, Rihm, born in Karlsruhe in 1952, wrote his first quartets, although the scores of these works were not published. In 1970 he published his First String Quartet, which was given the opus number 2. This piece, whose tonal language is akin to that of the Second Viennese School with an orientation toward twelve-tone structure and with a predominance of sevenths, ninths and tritones, has a texture which is at times quite thinned out and which then suddenly breaks apart all together: “as if suddenly destroyed: eradicated” is written above measure 109 in the score, after which the final five bars continue, bearing the marking: “tense!”. Fermata rests, hesitating echos of previous material and the abruptly erupting last chord. Following the Second String Quartet, also written in 1970 and bearing the marking opus 10, and the Third String Quartet, “im innersten” (with utmost intimacy), which was written in 1976, Rihm in the Winter of 1980/81 turned his attention to his Fourth String Quartet, in three movements: I. “agitato, allegro alla marcia, allegro ma non troppo; II. “con moto, allegro andante, allegro molto”; III. “adagio”. Rihm noted, “it is at once a straggler and at the same time a hint of things to come”(2). On the one hand it condenses the confrontation with tradition which was addressed in the first three quartets and is reminiscent of works such as the late Beethoven Quartets, of Mahler, of Shostakovitch and of Janacek’s Second Quartet, “Intimate Letters” (1928). On the other hand however, it also anticipates aspects which later became the subsequent quartets. For example, the first bar of the Eighth String Quartet, followed by a general pause, echoes the softly floating final repetitions in the viola and cello from Rihm’s Fourth Quartet. Also Rihm’s Fifth through Seventh Quartets seem to be drawn from the Fourth, although the music of the later quartets employs more fissured textures and is more gestural than its older relatives. Nonetheless, the Fourth Quartet is not merely a transitional piece or a hinge-composition, but a work with its own integrity and which in addition is a turbulent piece with many riddles which only in the future will (perhaps?) be unrivalled. |
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ARTISTS
DoelenKwartet: Frank de Groot, violin I; Laurens van Vliet, violin II; Karin Dolman, viola; Hans Woudenberg, cello |
TRACKS
String Quartet No. 1, Op. 2 (1970); String Quartet No. 4 (1980/81); String Quartet No. 5 “ohne Titel” (1983); String Quartet No. 8 (1987/88) |
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