The 2010 Continents series, sponsored by Roche, is dedicated to Wolfgang Rihm, one of the most prominent German contemporary composers and the “best-known representative of the young German musical movement of the ‘New Simplicity,’ perhaps better termed as neoromanticism or neoexpressionism” (Radio-France). In the 1970s he formulated the demand that music should be “full of emotion.” And at the time the composer, who is now 57, went on to say, “I want to move and be moved”, justifying this claim with the much discussed verdict, “everything about music is pathetic.” Of course, even in those days Rihm did not want to speak out in favour of a naive immediacy. It is not by chance that to his plea for a music full of emotions he added the requirement that “emotion must, however, be full of complexity.”
“Incidentally, I also learn from non-musicians sometimes. I am passionately drawn to the fine arts and it can be liberating to be talking to painters about the secrets surrounding the birth of works of art, about work processes in general.”