Wolfgang Rihm - Lichtzwang (Audio + Score)

Wolfgang Rihm (1952-2024) - Lichtzwang, in Memoriam Paul Celan (1975-76), for violin and orchestra

SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg
Conductor - Ernest Bour
Violin - János Négyesy

This video is dedicated to the composer, who passed away on the 27th of July 2024 in Ettlingen, at the age of 72. Rest in Peace.

[bryshares]

Something very mystical about this composition, especially at its extremes. Moving.

[RyanPower]

This will be the first of (at least) a few Rihm score videos, following the sad news of his passing away 2 days ago, may he rest in peace.

Some potential quotes I spotted (it is quite hard to find detailed information on the piece):

5:07 - Berg's Wozzeck; Berg is probably the biggest 'influence' to an extent. The violin emerging from a loud crashing opening can be seen as a parallel to Berg's own violin concerto, and there are some moments where the music seems to resemble Wozzeck very closely, not only here but at 11:23 too (Act 1 Interlude between Scene's 2 and 3)

10:53 - Shostakovich Symphony 2; Very dubious, it might just be my imagination but this sounds very close to both the opening to the symphony and the section before the choir enters, from around figure 56. Rihm writes "In Lichtzwang for solo violin and orchestra, the second part of an attempt at a portrait of Paul Celan conceived as a cycle, I deliberately bring out this epic element. I take as my point of departure the kernel of a single word, Lichtzwang (‘light compulsion’), the title of a poetry collection by Celan and the central poetic notion of one of the poems. It concerns someone who cannot ‘darken over towards’ someone else when, or because, there reigns a ‘light compulsion’. This occurs against the background of an imaginary eulogy for the dead that I, struck by the suicide of the poet, dared to term ‘in memoriam’." The only aspect of this that leads me to believe this musical quote may be of significance (if not a coincidence) is Shostakovich's own description of the symphony's second section (as told in a letter to Boleslav Yavorsky) as 'the death of a child killed on the Nevsky Prospekt'.

16:09 and 16:43 - Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde; the harp oscillations that are heard in Der Abschied (The Farewell... could be a coincidence but more than likely not?). The composer wrote "The obsessional character of both the eulogy for the dead and the violin/solo voice will have overcome that which surrounds it thanks to song. It then falls into the dissolution, indicated by unisons on C, of all sonorous individuality. These two processes—subjective eulogy for the dead and increasing solitude—occur simultaneously, one within the other...". This idea of 'solitude', (as well as Lichtzwang's dedication to the Romanian-born German-language poet of Jewish background Paul Celan, whose work was dominated by the Holocaust, in which his parents perished, and who eventually committed suicide) seems to align with the themes in the texts for Das Lied, particularly the 'solitude' of the protagonist in the final Abschied, and the 'unisons on C' that Mahler opens this 'farewell' are the same as those used by Rihm as a farewell to Paul Celan. Returning to Berg's influence and the similarities between this violin concerto and Berg's own, perhaps Berg's dedication to 'the memory of an angel' also ties in with the context of Lichtzwang.

[feinbird]

Thank you for uploading this one.
RIP Wolfgang Rihm.

[mrlj]

fckin love rihm. what a great piece. rip dude. terrific. sexy