WOLFGANG RIHM (b.1951): Two Other Movements (Roger Norrington [conductor]), Abkehr, Schattenstück.

Description: Despite its unprepossessing title, Two Other Movements (2004) is a major work in Rihm's sumptuous fully mature style, not so much neo-romantic as where romanticism was moving toward, bypassing the various modernistic and avant-garde byways of the twentieth century. The title derives from Rihm's interesting conceit that his individual works are, so to speak, carved from a pre-existing whole that contained them in an unrealized state, and that all his works are thus fundamentally connected, each successive one building and commenting on his previous output. The first, larger movement breathes and flows on an almost symphonic scale, and its powerful, epic sweep and dramatic climaxes sound for all the world like something that the Mahler of the 9th and 10th symphonies might have done had he lived to continue in a Schoenberg-wards direction. The multifaceted work incorporates a march and a vigorous toccata, and ends with a pained threnody in the highest string register, very Mahlerian indeed. The shorter second piece stays in one mood, somewhat akin to the heavy tread of a funeral march. The other pieces, from the 1980s, have more of the Darmstadt stamp on them, with greater structural fragmentation an a closer approach to atonality, though Abkehr - 'turning away' - actually quotes late Mahler, while Schattenstück has something of Sibelian, Nordic brooding about it, and both hint strongly at the direction Rihm's later music has taken. Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra; Christian Arming.