Aribert Reimann

Aribert Reimann died in March 2024. The Musikfest Berlin 2024 is dedicating a memorial concert to him. Few composers of our time had such a productive relationship with the poetic word as Aribert Reimann (*1936). Vocal music in its many facets, from lieder to opera, forms the main part of the multifaceted oeuvre of this musician with a comprehensive literary education. In his operas, his sense of literature was combined with a specific dramatic talent to create impressive works in which the emotions of the characters take on a vivid and subtle musical form. Freedom from constraints and aesthetic rigour was fundamental to Reimann’s compositional style. He used the tonal means and construction principles of New Music with great naturalness, without slavishly obeying any particular principle, and followed his imagination with complete creative freedom.

Aribert Reimann was a Berlin veteran, so to speak. The composer was born in Berlin on 4 March 1936 and lived in the south of the city for over four decades. His parents taught at the West Berlin Academy of Music, where Reimann studied composition and piano from 1955 to 1960. His musical career developed on two tracks. Entrusted with accompaniment duties by his mother, an alto, at an early age, Reimann soon became an internationally renowned accompanist who worked with numerous prominent singers. His partnership with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was particularly close and productive. For over two decades, from 1974 to 1998, Reimann held professorships for contemporary song in Hamburg and Berlin. Well-known artists such as the soprano Christine Schäfer have emerged from his singing classes.

As a composer, Reimann achieved a great success in 1978 with his opera “Lear” based on Shakespeare. The work is still on the repertoires of opera houses all over the world today in numerous new productions and, with its dramatic power, is one of the most important works of contemporary music theatre. Several major operatic works followed, such as “Medea” based on the drama by Franz Grillparzer, which premiered at the Vienna State Opera in 2010. An increasingly important strand in Reimann’s work since the 1980s has been a return to and creative exploration of musical tradition. Reimann’s special affinity with the music of the Romantic period is evident in this series of works in various arrangements ranging from simple instrumentation to independent musical commentary.