In the 1970s the young Wolfgang Rihm was at the vanguard of a movement to restore expressivity to contemporary German music and open a modern dialogue with the past.

While his strikingly original works often connect with the aesthetics of Romanticism, they do so without trace of nostalgia or sentimental yearning for styles overturned by the cataclysmic upheavals of the last century. Wigmore Hall’s Composer Focus Day, featuring performances by artists closely associated with Wolfgang Rihm, touches on the myriad ways in which his art draws pulsating life from the abiding energy of music and poetic images of an earlier age.