The eminent and prolific German composer Wolfgang Rihm has died. With some 500 works to his name – including operas, orchestral music, and chamber pieces – Rihm is said to have been one of the most frequently performed contemporary composers in Europe.
While no one would ever describe his music as a laugh riot, this is one of his more accessible works, helped along no doubt by the performance by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. The piece is called “Lichtes Spiel” (“Light Game,” or “Light Play”) and was composed in 2009. German-speakers might also detect it as a pun on “leichtes spiel” (“an easy job,” or more idiomatically, in English, “child’s play”).
Rihm, who lived with cancer for over a quarter century, died on Friday. He was 72 years-old.
Today marks the bicentennial of the birth of Carl Reinecke (1824-1910). What, no fireworks? Perhaps there should be.
Reinecke lived an unusually long life for his day. But it is the amount of incident crammed into that life that makes it seem even more so.
A musical prodigy who composed from the age of 7, and performed in public from the age of 12, Reinecke lived and worked in Copenhagen, Paris, Cologne, and Leipzig. He studied with Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, and Franz Liszt. His concert tours took him all over Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the British Isles.
He taught in Cologne, Breslau, and Leipzig. Among his pupils were Isaac Albéniz, Max Bruch, Ferruccio Busoni, Mikalojus Čiurlionis, Edvard Grieg, Leoš Janáček, Julius Röntgen, Christian Sinding, Charles Villiers Stanford, Johan Svendsen, and Felix Weingartner. Furthermore, he was music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra for 35 years. (The final, seven-movement version of Brahms’ “Ein deutsches Requiem” was among the works he premiered.)
Somewhere along the way, he found time to compose. I mean a lot. Look at the opus numbers on the links below! Operas, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, and instrumental works – some 300 pieces published. As if that’s not enough to make one sit up and take notice, it’s not far into the Opp. 200s that he’s writing in the 20th century. Think about that. I don’t know, it blows MY mind. It really brings home just how short music history is.
At the time of his birth, Beethoven and Schubert were still alive. In fact, he was born the same year Schubert wrote his “Death and the Maiden” quartet. He died the year Alban Berg wrote HIS String Quartet. It was a totally different world.
Toward the end of his life, between 1904 and 1907, Reinecke made some 27 piano rolls, 12 of which document performances of his own music. He was the earliest born musician to have his artistry as an interpreter preserved in any format. Among the other composers whose music he “recorded” were Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann.
He died in 1910 at the age of 85.
And where is he now? Flutists, I suppose, still know “Undine.” Pianists may be familiar with the cadenzas he wrote for the Mozart and Beethoven concertos. He also composed a fun “Toy Symphony” I used to enjoy broadcasting around Christmas.
Mostly, however, his works remain cherished secrets for the blessed few, like holy relics preserved in the hearts and libraries of the most devout musical monastics.
You’ll find plenty to enjoy below. Take a few minutes today to celebrate Carl Reinecke!
Flute Sonata in E minor, Op. 167 “Undine” (1882) – the subtitle alludes to a novella by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, very popular among the Romantics, that tells the story of a water spirit who marries a knight in order to gain a soul
Flute Concerto in D major, Op. 283 (1908)
Harp Concerto in E minor, Op. 182 (1884)
Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 144 (1877)
Violin Concerto in G minor, Op. 141 (1876), composed for Joseph Joachim
Toy Symphony, Op. 239 (first 15 minutes of this LP)
Hupfeld piano roll, c. 1908, of Reinecke and his wife, Margharite, playing selections from his suite “Nutcracker and Mouse King,” composed in 1855 – predating Tchaikovsky’s ballet on the same subject by nearly 40 years
His surname reads the same forward and backward; which is oddly appropriate for a composer whose music plenty of listeners have felt doesn’t seem to really go anywhere. But knowing what I do of Max Reger, I’m sure he couldn’t have cared less about other people’s opinions.
Perhaps the craziest exemplar of crazy German contrapuntalism, Reger could write music of such density that the individual voices could get lost in a tangle, deep inside a knot, somewhere in an impenetrable thicket.
He was mostly a composer of “abstract” music – mainly a lot of fugues and sets of variations – seeing himself as the heir of Beethoven and Brahms. But it is the Baroque masters Reger most closely resembles, in his own gargantuan, overcooked way, especially in his organ works, of which he composed many.
Aside from his sporadically delightful (though occasionally borderline) “Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart” and a handful of organ works, most of his prolific output is known mainly by specialists. For some reason or another, Rudolf Serkin remained a high-profile torchbearer. Serkin recorded Reger’s Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra and, later in life, the “Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Bach.”
To me, Reger comes closest to being palatable – and even charming – when restricted to a single, non-keyboard instrument, as in his sonatas for solo violin and suites for solo cello.
Also, it sounds like he may have actually had some fun composing his “Four Tone Poems after Arnold Böcklin.” Böcklin, you may recall, was the Swiss artist who painted “The Isle of the Dead,” which inspired the third of these. Surprisingly, the tone poems are late works. Did anyone see them coming? I guess after a lifetime of getting all tangled up, Reger just wanted to walk around with loose shoelaces for a change.
Despite the fact that in most of his photos he looks like he’s got a mouth full of sauerkraut, Reger actually proved himself to have a sharp sense of humor. His most famous retort to a critic came in the form of a letter written in 1906. It reads: “I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me.”
Reger, you rascal. Why couldn’t you get more of that into your music?
On the occasion of his sesquicentenary, happy 150th, Max Reger!
“Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart”
“Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H”
Rudolf Serkin plays the “Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Bach”
Serkin plays the Piano Concerto
Sonata for Unaccompanied Violin in G Major, Op. 91, No. 6
“Our future lies in art, especially in music. In times when spiritual goods are rarer than material ones, and egotism, envy and hatred govern the world, music will do much to re-establish love among mankind.”
– Richard Strauss
This is the last music Strauss ever conducted, as part of his 85th birthday celebration. He also stipulated that the music be performed at his funeral. On that occasion, a 36 year-old Georg Solti conducted, and the three singers, in turn, broke down, overcome by emotion. Its message is, simultaneously, one of valediction and renewal. In a performance like this is, it can be almost unbearably poignant.
