Ingo Metzmacher
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Concert video
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Wolfgang Rihm’s work is pervaded by “lines of force”, such as a passion for literature and the visual arts, and often by borrowing from his own music. Earlier pieces are reworked and overwritten without being discarded. A crucial role on this labyrinthine path through time is played by lines, both written and performed: “I love the convoluted web of lines in orchestra’s potential”, he explains. “They are the intertwining grids on which I’ve been working for years”. In Die Stücke des Sängers, Orpheus is torn apart and his lyre is smashed. But new things emerge from the destruction, for his harp continues to play: “Everything I’ve brought forth by way of music I owe to a life, not to a strategy, theory or experiment. It has always been life itself.”