On our blog, our contemporary composers present their favorite work from our catalogs. This time Nikolaus Brass introduces Rolf Riehm’s Hamamuth - Stadt der Engel.

„Rolf Riehm’s music strikes me again and again. Like an electric shock. It first enters my body and then my brain.

Hamamuth - Stadt der Engel – what a tremendous piece. Before I took a glance at the score my plan was to listen to Hamamuth while I was driving my car. This did not work out. I was unable to concentrate on anything but the music, so the next parking lot became my refuge. I could not free myself from this music, being captivated by the energy of the composition and the interpretation that flowed into me (I was listening to the recording by Nicolas Hodges). I wanted to shout out: “Stop, slow down. This is a surprise attack!” And I asked myself: is this the way I wanted to be treated by music? Yes, it actually is. This is music as an existential force of life; music that hurls truths in my face – the truths that I can easily switch off on other “channels”.

In his “Reflections on the piece” that are included in the score, Riehm says that he has composed Hamamuth in response to the “pictures of devastation in Iraq that you constantly see on TV. The angels must be still somewhere between these ruins. In the state of destruction the ‘sacred’ has an extraordinary presence.” He discovered “this paradox conglomerate” when he found a report about Anselm Kiefer’s heavenly palaces. Those palaces are described as “grey towers, ruins of concrete steel”, all of which being in danger of collapse and badly damaged but still standing firmly.

Additionally there are pictures from the battle zones of the Iraq war and pictures of places that have not been destroyed so far: “I constantly see photos of the city of Shibam in Yemen before my inner eye. (…) A city of dreams, a symbol of the disastrous situation; a city of angels (=beautiful in an unreal way) that I can’t get to (=danger of life)... Unprecedented confusion in perception.”

The music puts pressure on the listener. It holds him tight and it says what is actually happening: disaster. However, light shines through this disaster as a formulated statement. At the same time there is another message in another form. There is a very peculiar balance of destruction and construction in the architecture of Rolf Riehm’s music. In each symbol of extermination of violence there always is a sign of indestructibility. This can be clearly seen by the last part of the composition, the one called “Gesang Schibam”.

To me Hamamuth – Stadt der Engel is one of most important compositions for this difficult piece of furniture that is the piano. It proves all of those wrong who claim that you can’t actually compose in an authentic way anymore (neither for the piano nor in general). No, there is no irony and no “break” involved here. The break goes right through the composed world and through the composed subject. And by mastering this fraction, by constructively penetrating the chosen material this music strikes me as being truthful. Dear Rolf Riehm, thank you very much for your effort in writing this piece.”

Nikolaus Brass, March 7,  2015