Wolfgang Rihm - Lichtes Spiel

Year of composition: 2009 

The title of Lichtes Spiel might be translated as "Light Game" or "Light Play", and may be taken as a pun on the German expression "leichtes Spiel", meaning "an easy job"; or what we might call "Child's Play". Wolfgang Rihm has said that he intended it as "a transparent orchestral movement... something light, but not 'lightweight'". The result, which uses instrumental forces of Mozartian proportions, is a detailed, finely wrought score in which the composer provides fine-tuned indications of how practically every note is to be articulated.

Instructions for tempo and mood are similarly precise. For example, the notation governing the opening section: Un poco sostenuto, non troppo lento, poco à poco più scorrendo ("A bit sustained, not too slow, bit by bit more scurrying"). It is the sort of directive one sometimes finds in Beethoven, particularly in his late works.

A fair amount of variety is incorporated into this work as well, and extends to its dynamics, which occasionally reach a point of relative loudness -- most notably in a passage marked Allegro, un poco pesante ("Fast, rather heavy") about three-quarters of the way through. Nonetheless, high volume is a rarity in this piece, which is overwhelmingly skewed toward the quiet end of the sonic spectrum. In fact, the overriding dynamic indication would appear to be pianissimo: the work begins and ends at this very quiet level, and it returns throughout as a sort of reference point from which the music may depart but to which it always returns.