• Rolf Wallin
  • Drei Gedichte von Rainer Maria Rilke (1994)

  • Chester Music Ltd (World)

Commissioned by the Norwegian Broadcasting Company

Version also available for high voice and piano

Programme Note

These three poems were written between 1900 and 1908, and they are very different in terms of form, subject matter, and atmosphere. Liebes-Lied is about a strong but painful love, Buddha in der Glorie, a description of religious ecstasy, quite unusual in the works of Rilke, and Sluss-stück, about death, which exists in the midst of us, in the middle of life.

The work with the songs was a part of a process that occupied me a lot for a period. Is it possible to approach the melodic element in a new way, after many years of letting it live in the shadows of other musical elements, such as rhythm, timbre and form? This is a possible solution.

Discography