Not my favorite Rihm,great Arditti playing,balanced storms
04/09/1999
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Germany has always had a plurality of artisitic styles and musical languages. It is only now with the advent postmodernity that these different expressive strains are being encouraged. And Rihm represents the reactionary trend away from the vigours of modernity without really being anti-modernist, like having your cake and eating it to. Rihm's creativity tapped into Neo-Expressionism, long a respected expressive path in Germany dating back to the early years of this century. These "Quartets" here are excellent examples of Rihm's musical language, however I prefer his "Symphonies" and "Operas" where his musically graphic,brutal and impassioned imagination can run wild. The "Quartets" by contrast are more introspective, The "Third Quartet" with its heavenly length and ideology reflecting a "life-to death" lifeworld perspective is like a modern Grimm's Tale The Arditti are well suited for this music knowing the full compass of the extended world of strings from the depths of darkness,their lower strings, to spiky screeching upper registers are all visited for these abstract dramas. The Arditti in a cross-handed way are not an impassioned bunch,so the music has an expressive distance which serves Rihm well oddly enough. Too much bursting irrationality would mar his work. You always need a balance and a vision of where the excesses in the music occur. In listening you might catch fragments or suggestions of the pained lyricism of Schubert,or the darker moments in Mahler. But Rihm is on top, you always know where he begins and the others leave off, not every good postmodernist can say that with conviction."