Rolf Riehm

Two works by Rolf Riehm, each in the live recording of its first performance, evoke archaic and archetypal situations. Die schrecklich-gewaltigen Kinder (2003), a 55-minute piece for coloratura soprano and large ensemble after Hesiod's Theogony, is sung by Piia Komsi with Ensemble Modern. O Daddy (1984), for orchestra and recorded sounds, was premiered at Donaueschingen. The disc was nominated for the OPUS Klassik in 2020.

Riehm was born in Saarbrücken on 15 June 1937 and died in January 2026. Schott calls him an unconventional artist, a radical composer and a politically engaged man. Die schrecklich-gewaltigen Kinder was recorded by Hessischer Rundfunk on 15 October 2003 at the Bockenheimer Depot in Frankfurt, with Hermann Bäumer conducting. O Daddy comes from the Donauhalle in Donaueschingen on 21 October 1984, with the SWF-Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden under Kazimierz Kord, in a production of Südwestfunk.

The large work draws on an excerpt from Hesiod's Theogony and on its later retellings, among them that of Robert von Ranke-Graves. From the poem and its history of adaptation Riehm took compositional structures and details, turning the material into archetypal worlds of sound. It unfolds in thirteen sections, among them two Großseufzer (great sighs), songs on the speech of Mother Earth, a speech of Kronos, a Notturno, two sound pictures of Uranos and Gaia, and a postlude. O Daddy reflects on the true story of Marco Caruso, a young Italian who killed his father in 1977 and received a remarkable wave of public support. In its sixteen minutes one can never predict whether a constellation will be followed by rapid strings, the electronic sound of a recorded voice or percussive rhythmic figures.

Riehm's music rejects tradition yet draws on the whole historical range of expressive means. Wary of systematic organisation, it tells stories in sound for attentive listeners, about mythical, psychological and political matters. The two works on this disc, written almost twenty years apart, take one subject from ancient myth and one from a news story of the 1970s.

CD, Wergo WER 7373 2, released in 2018, with recordings licensed from Hessischer Rundfunk and SWR Media Services.