Associates of the Naxos Music Group were saddened to learn of the recent passing of German composer Wolfgang Rihm, at the age of 72.

Born in Karlsruhe on 13 March 1952, Wolfgang Rihm began composing at the age of eleven. He subsequently studied with Eugen Werner Velte at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe  (1968–72), with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne (1972–73) and with Klaus Huber at Freiburg’s Staatliche Hochschule für Musik (1973–76). He received an honorary doctorate from Berlin’s Freie Universität in 1998 and taught at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe before being appointed professor of composition there in 1985.

Among his numerous honours were the Preis der Stadt Stuttgart, the Berlin Kunstpreis Stipendium, a residency at Villa Massimo in Rome from the Deutsche Künstlerakademie, and the Beethoven-Preis der Stadt Bonn. He was elected jointly to the Akademien der Künste in Berlin, Mannheim and Munich in 1991 and received a Prix de Composition Musical de la Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco in 1997. He was made Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2001 and received the Ernst von Siemens Musikpreis in 2003.

Wolfgang Rihm was among the most prolific composers of his time, with a catalogue of more than 400 works representing all the major musical genres, including opera (both chamber and full-length), orchestral works (many of them inter-related), chamber music (including 13 string quartets) and solo instrumental pieces. Although his formative works reflected the influence of the European post-war avant-garde, he never repudiated the musical past. Some of his earliest mature works make clear allusions to Austro-German late Romanticism, which was then enjoying renewed acceptance, while his subsequent works drew on the fullest extent of that tradition, however indirectly or obliquely.

Violinist Tianwa Yang, who recorded three albums of Rihm’s music for Naxos, paid tribute:

“A wonderful human being and great musician has left us. Thank you, dear Wolfgang Rihm, both for all your incredible and emotional music, and for being a great inspiration to me over the last eighteen years.”

Tianwa Yang and Wolfgang Rihm
Photo: Astrid Ackermann

Wolfgang Rihm Biography & Discography