Arditti Quartet & Claron McFadden

Adorno was formal: true art must break with every convention. This idea could be described as the credo of an entire generation of 20^th century composers. The German composer Wolfgang Rihm felt that it was time to renovate the modernism embodied by Stockhausen and Boulez. Although his work is anything but reactionary, he does not shy away from the emotional, sometimes sentimental nature of romanticism. For his string quartets, Rihm combines modern playing techniques with an almost Mahleresque drama. In ‘Akt und Tag’, voice and string quartet are blended into an expressive and surprisingly organic whole. The Arditti Quartet, together with soprano Claron McFadden, sketches a portrait of an idiosyncratic composer who proves that it is also possible to be original without renouncing tradition.