Wolfgang Rihm – Jagden und Formen/ hunts and forms (1995-2001)[cuộc săn lùng và các hình thức]
Ensemble Intercontemporain, Cornelius Meister
fm (France Musique, 03/2013)
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Rihm: Jagden und Formen Ensemble Modern/My
(Deutsche Grammophon) *****
£12.99
Wolfgang Rihm composes so fluently and copiously that keeping up with his progress from this side of the English Channel is an uphill and sometimes bewildering task. Works frequently come not singly, but in series; gigantic orchestral scores are grouped together just as regularly as chamber works; and the range of stylistic references and the musical language he uses is unpredictably wide. Rihm would rather compose a new work, it seems, than revise an existing score, so that musical possibilities and implications that crop up in one piece are often pursued in another, to create the connective chains that bind his diverse and seemingly inchoate output.
But the magnificent Jagden und Formen is an exception to that general method of working. Instead of leaving compositional loose ends to be taken up in another, independent work, it actually brings together a number of initially independent pieces and develops them into a seamless and utterly convincing unity, which Rihm then repeatedly works over in a way that is more akin to Boulez’s idea of a « work-in-progress » than to the swift and decisive creative processes of so much of his composition.
There have been premieres of at least three different versions of Jagden und Formen, each longer than its predecessor. The first was heard in 1999, while Ensemble Modern brought a second to the Huddersfield festival in 2000. This recording establishes the version that was performed in Basle last November as definitive, at least for the moment. The starting point for all of them was a series of three pieces from the mid 1990s, Gejagte Form (Hunted Form), Gedrängte Form (Harried Form) and Verborgene Formen (Hidden Forms). In this most recent manifestation, it is Gejagte Form that is the source of most the ideas and processes in this astonishingly well-sustained 50-minute continuous movement.
This source declares itself at five turning points in the piece, where there are direct allusions to Gejagte Form, but what will strike anyone hearing Jagden und Formen for the first time is the natural flow of the invention, the way in which everything seems to grow organically out of the opening bars. A pair of violins move in and out of phase and gradually introduce the rest of the ensemble, a line-up that is dominated by woodwind and brass, though there are also harp, guitar and piano as well as a string quintet.
The pace is frantic – there are moments when ideas seem to tumble over one another, as if Rihm can scarcely find the musical space to accommodate the richness of his invention – and the instrumental writing astonishingly challenging. Every so often, though, the onward rush is halted and the music pauses for breath; pools of delicate, gentle lyricism appear, only to be swept away as the pace quickens once again.
Through all of this the sense of an over-arching shape, of a profound musical architecture, is always there. The ending, when it comes, seems at the same time unexpected and satisfyingly inevitable. Rihm has produced a number of remarkable works, but Jagden und Formen is one of the very finest, and the performance by Ensemble Modern, conducted by Dominique My, does it justice in a quite outstanding way.
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