Ein Traumspiel / Denn Bleiben Ist Nirgends

Description

"After 54 years, I heard my 'Traumspiel' exactly as I had imagined it!" (Aribert Reimann about the performance at the Theater of the Hof). "Ein Traumspiel" (A Dream), the first opera by Aribert Reimann, is finally available on CD, from the production of the Theater of the Hof that has garnered unanimous enthusiasm from critics and audiences alike. Vocal music occupies a central place in Aribert Reimann's work, and literature plays an equally fundamental role, serving as a source of inspiration, dramatic impulse, and subjects, while providing fertile ground for musical creation and transformation. Reimann's vocal compositions, from solo pieces to opera, are almost always musical settings of literary texts. Visually stunning, "Traumspiel" captivates from the very first note with its diversity and melodic intensity. Aribert Reimann manages to bring to life, in a sensual way, the underlying theme of August Strindberg's play, compassion. In the end, he offers Indra's daughter a gift wrapped in human worries, suffering, and complaints, woven with masterful music, which she will take with her to the afterlife with the god Indra. In addition to August Strindberg, Reimann was also inspired by the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, although he adopts a radically different musical approach to Rilke's first "Duino Elegy": in his composition "Denn Bleiben ist nirgends" (For to remain is to be nowhere), he combines the text, recited by a narrator, with a symphonic orchestra playing in a broad and expressive style to create a melodrama. Here, the music corresponds to Rilke's poetic text which – according to Reimann in his notes on the work – "justifies the development of an independent musical piece and is not simply the starting point for accompanying music." The result is "a constant exchange, in which the expressive impulses sometimes come from the language and are taken up by the music, or vice versa, until each becomes the instrument of the other."