Two large orchestral works by Rolf Riehm, both in first recordings made in the composer's presence. Shifting (1994) is a violin concerto played by Guy Braunstein, the soloist of its world premiere, with the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln under Dennis Russell Davies. Archipel Remix (1999), for large orchestra and electronic playbacks, lasts almost fifty minutes and is conducted by Peter Rundel.
Riehm was born in Saarbrücken on 15 June 1937. He studied musicology in Frankfurt and music education with oboe as main subject at the Frankfurt Musikhochschule, then composition in Wolfgang Fortner's master class in Freiburg. He taught at the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne and, from 1974 to 2000, was professor of composition and theory at the Frankfurt Musikhochschule. The critic Bernd Leukert called him an unconventional artist who put into music a whole cosmos of philosophy, history, myth, fairy tale, memory and politics, the sublime and the trivial. Both recordings are WDR productions.
In a letter to Braunstein, Riehm described Shifting as "a huge, sweeping melody", like a river that keeps gaining strength from the slope of its landscape, the landscape being the expressivity that drives the melody forward. The third section is a single suspension stretched to almost five minutes. Shortly before the end all constraints fall away and only free movement remains, which Riehm calls the true beginning of the piece. Archipel Remix is conceived as an archipelago of islands of different sizes. Riehm wanted to escape the natural passage of time from beginning to end, and the 18 sections are grouped as islands and islets. Their titles point to the materials: Verschliffener Gesang, Chopin, Klangwürfel, Froberger-Abgang and Froberger Remix, and a closing Stadt der Geister.
Riehm's best-known stage work is the opera Sirenen - Bilder des Begehrens und des Vernichtens, premiered at Oper Frankfurt in 2014. His prizes include the Kunstpreis des Saarlandes (1992) and the Hindemith Prize of the City of Hanau (2002). He was still writing for orchestra at eighty: Die Tode des Orpheus, for countertenor and orchestra, was premiered by the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern in 2017.
CD, Wergo WER 7357 2, released in 2016.
