Wolfgang Rihm

String quartets by Wolfgang Rihm from both ends of his life as a composer. The Minguet Quartett plays two works written when he was a schoolboy, the String Quartet in G minor of 1966 and the Streichquartett 1968, together with two late pieces: Geste zu Vedova (2015) and Epilog (2012/13), for which the cellist Jens Peter Maintz joins the quartet.

Rihm was born in Karlsruhe on 13 March 1952 and died in Ettlingen on 27 July 2024. He began composing at eleven, long before his studies at the Karlsruhe Musikhochschule, where he passed the state examinations in composition and music theory. The Minguet Quartett here is Ulrich Isfort and Annette Reisinger, violins, Aroa Sorin, viola, and Matthias Diener, cello. The recordings were made in 2015 and 2016 in the Kammermusiksaal of Deutschlandfunk in Cologne, as a co-production with Deutschlandradio. The producers are Frank Kämpfer and Rolf W. Stoll, and the liner notes are by Rainer Nonnenmann.

Geste zu Vedova is a homage to the Venetian painter Emilio Vedova (1919-2006), whose kinetic, energetic way of working made a deep impression on Rihm. The music answers it in percussive blocks, a single movement of sharply contrasted rhythmic sections lasting about ten minutes. The Quartet in G minor, written at fourteen, stands close to early Beethoven, when Beethoven was still under Haydn's influence. The 1968 quartet, in several movements ending with a chaconne, already looks towards Bartók, Hindemith, Shostakovich and Schoenberg. Epilog, written 45 years after the first quartet, takes the same scoring as Schubert's String Quintet in C. It works through associations rather than themes and uses advanced playing techniques.

Geste zu Vedova was commissioned by the Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova and first performed by the Minguet Quartett in Venice on 21 October 2015. Reviewing the disc in The Strad, David Kettle wrote: "these are fiercely intense performances, bristling with conviction". In MusicWeb International, Stuart Sillitoe called the Vedova piece "a mature masterpiece".

CD, Wergo WER 7346 2, released in 2017.