Rihm Gesungene Zeit

At the very moment when I was in conversation with Paul Sacher, and he was encouraging me - actually commissioning me - to write for Anne-Sophie Mutter, I remembered in a flash high notes that I had heard her play with uncommon energy and animation. I had never encountered in her playing that attenuation and impoverishment in SLOW playing in the highest regions that is typical of some virtuosos: on the contrary, precisely in remoteness her playing is richest and most alive. Especially then, when I want to give form to what is most remote, I want its representation to be the act of a living being. From that I began to spin. The thread? Until it was all spun?

The orchestra is small, and plays the role of doppelganger. The violin speaks its nerve – line out into the resounding space – inscribes it there. In essence, this is monophonic music. And it is always song, even where beat and pulse shorten the breath and press it hard.

The line, is it a whole? It is all only a part, a segment, a fragment; it is delivered up to our observation without beginning and without ending - and as we listen we draft the outline of a whole that isn't there. But it must be there....

Wolfgang Rihm