Wolfgang Rihm

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Wolfgang Rihm

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Wolfgang Rihm is one of the best known and most frequently discussed contemporary composers. It is therefore only natural that an overview of this important musician's work be undertaken. The two orchestras selected to do so, the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra of SWR are resident on either side of the town of Karlsruhe, where Wolfgang Rihm lives. Additionally, there has been a decades-long connection between these ensembles and the composer.
The fifth installment of the Wolfgang Rihm Edition brings together four orchestral pieces, composed between 2002 and 2008. "Metamorphosis I" was written for the NDR Symphony Orchestra, "Metamorphosis II" for the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, "Metamorphosis III" for the Staatskapelle Weimar, and "Metamorphosis IV" for the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra. The last two of these works ("Metamorphosis III and IV") were completed in 2008 and are thus, representative of the composer's most current style. As with all of Rihm's cyclical works, each piece stands alone, but the compositional concerns and indeed, much of the thematic material, recurs in endlessly "transformed" and "metamorphosed" , creating a sense of change within a unified structure within these colorful and sonorous new works.