Rihm
Jakob Lenz
Joachim Goltz (baritone) et al; Nationaltheater-Orchester Mannheim/Franck Ollu
Oehms OC 981 66:14 mins
Clip: Rihm - Jakob Lenz, Bild Was ist geschehen (Oehms)
The German composer Wolfgang Rihm died in July at the age of 72. He was well known for his operas, of which Jakob Lenz (1979) was an early and notable example.
The subject is the eponymous Baltic German Sturm und Drang poet and playwright (1751-92), an episode from whose sad life (he seems to have suffered from schizophrenia and eventually died homeless on a Moscow street) was turned into a novella by the early Romantic writer Georg Büchner. It’s his text which forms the basis of Michael Fröhling’s libretto.
Lenz’s unrequited love for Friederike Brion, a former flame of his sometime friend Goethe, runs like a leitmotif through the score.
The forces are small: three principal singers – the tormented Lenz (a tour de force by baritone Joachim Goltz), Pastor Oberlin (bass Patrick Zielke) and Lenz’s friend Kaufmann (tenor Raphael Wittner), both of whom who try to help him; plus a group of six adult offstage voices and a handful of children’s voices.
In addition, there’s an instrumental ensemble of 11 players – here members of the Nationaltheater-Orchester Mannheim under the skilful baton of Franck Ollu. Recorded live during a run of the opera in January/February 2022, the result possesses considerable conviction.
Given the dour subject and Lenz’s tragic existence, the result is a stark drama clothed in appropriately straight-down-the-line modernism; but it possesses integrity in every bar, the composer’s extraordinary technical skills making it dense but rewarding. George Hall