Sound Icon performs chamber music works
The Goethe-Institut Boston welcomes new music ensemble
Sound Icon to celebrate the work of preeminent German composer
Wolfgang Rihm. Remarkably prolific and famously brilliant, Rihm views his composition as a direct descendent of the famed Austro-German lineage of composers, going through the intense romanticism of Arnold Schoenberg. He paints his music in broad, Wagnerian strokes, eliciting comparisons to the raw, emotive manner of action painters such as Jackson Pollock. This concert features works for smaller instrumentation by Rihm - including his seminal twelfth string quartet - and a second concert on October 28th at Boston's Fenway Center will feature two of his well-known works for larger ensembles.
**SPECIAL SCREENING**
An interview with Wolfgang Rihm, recorded in August 2016 with Jeffrey Means, will be screened during intermission. Sponsored by the Goethe-Institut Boston.
This concert is presented in partnership with Sound Icon.
The program includes the following works:
Brahmslibewaltzer
In Nuce
Verzeichnung - Studie
Antlitz
String Quartet #12
WOLFGANG RIHM was born on 13 March 1952 in Karlsruhe, a city near the French and Swiss borders, at a stone’s throw from Strasbourg and Basel, two of the many places where he and his music are at home. He lives there to this day in a spacious apartment not only full of books and scores – those one takes for granted – but also of paintings by contemporary artists, mainly by Kurt Kocherscheidt, the Austrian painter with whom Rihm was befriended and to whom he has dedicated a number of works.
Rihm is a composer, professor of composition at the Music Academy of his native city (where his students included Vykintas Baltakas and Jörg Widmann), a remarkable writer on music with several books to his name, including collections of his articles and interviews. He also sits on a number of influential committees in Germany and has a say in decisions affecting the working conditions of his fellow musicians.
No doubt about it: Wolfgang Rihm is a unique phenomenon, larger than life. His knowledge of music (the art and craft of composition as well as of music history from ancient times up to the present day) is vast. But he also seems to know everything worth knowing about literature, painting, architecture, philosophy and he freely draws on those as sources of inspiration. A look at the texts he has set to music is an indication of the breadth of his culture: from Homer through Hölderlin and Goethe to Rilke, Botho Strauss and Durs Grünbein.
The world he has created with his compositions which now outnumber 400 works is a veritable universe. As such, it cannot be pidgeonholed. To paraphrase the title of a well-known British film on Thomas More, he is a composer for all seasons. Rihm has written 'new music' as it is commonly called and some of his titles have become signposts in the history of post-war music. Soloists, chamber groups and orchestras programme these works as a matter of course now, they have become an integral part of the repertoire (Jagden und Formen, Chiffre-cycle, Pol - Kolchis - Nucleus). Of similar significance are the compositions which take their cue, as it were, from music of past centuries: oratorios with Johann Sebastian Bach as a point of reference (Deus Passus), orchestral pieces of Brahmsian sound and gesture (Ernster Gesang, Nähe fern 1-4), chamber music in the wake of Robert Schumann (Fremde Szenen).
SOUND ICON is a sinfonietta committed to performing the most significant progressive works of the past few decades. As a sinfonietta, Sound Icon offers the color palette of a full orchestra with the precision and flexibility of a chamber ensemble. The technical and logistical challenges of contemporary repertoire for sinfonietta often discourage live performance in the United States, however, Sound Icon embraces this music and aims to bring this repertoire to Boston and beyond. Through ambitious programming performed to the highest standards, Sound Icon engages audiences in dialogues about what progressive music is and can be: music that redefines rules, experiences, and expectations.
Led by conductor and artistic director Jeffrey Means, Sound Icon has quickly become established as a leading artistic force in Boston, performing challenging, cutting-edge contemporary repertoire for sinfonietta that is rarely heard live in Boston and the United States. Sound Icon has worked with prominent composers such as Philippe Leroux and Salvatore Sciarrino and performed works by Gérard Grisey, Helmut Lachenmann, Beat Furrer, Wolfgang Rihm, Salvatore Sciarrino, Georg Friedrich Haas, Fausto Romitelli and many others. Founded in spring 2011, Sound Icon has since established relationships with local cultural institutions such as the Boston University Center for New Music, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, and Northeastern University, creating cross-institutional collaborations that support truly exciting events. In spring 2013, Sound Icon was featured as the Fromm Players at Harvard, and has been involved with other local concert series and presenters. In addition to live concert events, Sound Icon frequently holds workshops with young composers and instrumentalists as part of collaborative academic residencies. Sound Icon’s mission is to perform significant progressive repertoire for sinfonietta and to advocate ambitious music in Boston and beyond.
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