When Rolf Riehm writes for the guitar, he takes the instrument’s many-layered context into account, writes Hanno Ehrler in the booklet. Riehm, born in Saarbrücken in 1937 and professor of composition and music theory at the Musikhochschule in Frankfurt am Main from 1974, does not see himself as a composer in an ivory tower; political and social experience enters his music. In the five guitar pieces this happens through the very choice of instrument: the guitar stands for the protest song, for the generation of ’68, for a distant medieval world of sound or, in “Toccata Orpheus”, for the utmost differentiation and artistry.
“KlageTrauerSehnsucht” (1977) for two guitars is dedicated to Victor Jara, the Chilean singer and idol of the Unidad Popular. In the score Riehm quotes a report from the “Frankfurter Rundschau” of 15 September 1973, according to which Jara’s hands were broken in prison because he had kept up his fellow prisoners’ spirits with his songs. A second point of reference is South American folk music, for instance the side notes, noises and breathing in Atahualpa Yupanqui’s playing. The short phrases bear markings such as “timid”, “aggressive in a disturbed way” or “elegiac” and follow one another in hard cuts, like scenes in a film. The “Notturno for those who die without mourning” (1977) is built in the same way: Riehm’s response to the funeral of Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe and to the reactions it provoked among the public, a piece against forgetting.
“Lamento di Tristano” (1982) for two guitars is based on a 12th-century estampie, heard in ornamented form in the first of its five parts, with the bodies of the guitars used as drums. Riehm calls the estampie the brush with which his work is painted; the further parts are about dream and nightmare, a “dramatic eroticon” arising from the asynchrony of the two guitars, Tristan’s struggle against love and his death. In “Toccata Orpheus” (1990) for solo guitar Riehm explores playing technique to the limits of playability; a notation on four staves, developed especially for the piece, also fixes the sliding of the left hand, the rattling of the strings and muted playing. “Au bord du jour” (1996) demands that every sound be plucked in the most “strength-sapping” way; motifs break off, feints alternate with “correct” sections, until the listener no longer knows where in the piece he is.
Susanne Hilker and Harald Lillmeyer, both born in 1959, studied contemporary chamber music together at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen and passed their final examination with distinction in 1988. They worked with Rolf Riehm from 1989 onwards and in 1990 toured South America with him for the Goethe-Institut. They play the works for two guitars as a duo; the “Notturno” is played by Harald Lillmeyer, “Toccata Orpheus” by Susanne Hilker. The recordings were made in 1995 and 1996 as WDR productions in the Kleiner Sendesaal of the Cologne Funkhaus, produced by Harry Vogt; Cybele released them in 1999.