Interview with Wolfnag Rihm

Wolfgang Rihm, you have been working with Ensemble Modern for over forty years. Are there any moments that stick in your memory?

It's hard to separate all the different impressions. But one specific constant applies to Ensemble Modern: the certainty that your music will get the best possible performance.

Ensemble Modern is performing the two works »Abschiedsstücke. Gedichte von Wolf Wondratschek« and »Concerto ›Séraphin‹«...

Looking back, these two compositions seem very different from one another. I'm looking forward to finding out if that is really the case.

The »Abschiedsstücke« (Farewell Pieces) were given their first performance in 1993 by Ensemble Modern under the baton of George Benjamin in Badenweiler. How did the cooperation with Wolf Wondratschek come about at the time?

Like me, Wolf Wondratschek grew up in Karlsruhe, but we didn't meet until much later. He gave me his »Mexikanische Sonette«, and I set some of them to music for a full orchestra as the »Lowry-Lieder«. That was back in 1987/88. Five years later I wrote the »Abschiedsstücke«, which have a completely different mood. Exactly what is the difference? Hard to say. Maybe more like a concerto, closer to the idiom of the Séraphin pieces?

The »Concerto ›Séraphin‹« belongs to a large family of works that includes »Séraphin« and the »›Séraphin‹ Symphony«. One piece doesn't seem to follow from its predecessor in a linear fashion. Would you describe the »Concerto ›Séraphin‹« as the final version?
 
Sure. I think the idea has been exhausted now. In the meantime, there is enough music to fill an entire »Séraphin day«: Starting with Baudelaire's and Artaud's texts about the shadow theatre run by an Italian named Serafino, all manner of theatrical ideas can be thought out – there is really no limit to them, from totally concrete to totally abstract. The basic idea was to follow this free line of imagination as long as possible.
 
 
How should we imagine the work on the different development stages? What supplied the impulse for the next stage in each case? »Hunts and Forms« is another such group of works. And you once described yourself as a »landscape gardener« in this landscape of compositions…
 
With the gardener metaphor I was definitely referring to all my different projects and plans. I tend to their growth, but the actual growing is something they need to do themselves. In other words, I am responsible for providing energy, an ideal climate, and the right amount of moisture, light and warmth. And the soil needs to be turned over from time to time. But I prefer to avoid pesticides.