Rolf Riehm: Im Nachtigallental

This story is of an almost unrivalled theatricality. Orpheus, the shamanic magician and founder of a religion from Thrace, renowned for his song that captivated all and sundry, is torn to pieces by the Maenads (Mænades), the frenzied companions of Dionysus, following his failed attempt to bring his wife, the Thracian dryad Eurydice, back to life from Hades. They nailed his head to his lyre and cast it into the River Hebron (now the Maritsa). However, the head of Calliope’s son did not cease to sing–throughout the entire river journey that carried it to the Thracian Sea, where the current washed it ashore on the northern coast of the island of Lesbos. There, near the town of Antissa, lies the Nightingale Valley, where the nightingales had long since ceased to sing and the people lived on joylessly and sadly. But when the lyre with the singing head was found, the nightingales too burst into magnificent song once more, and the mood in the land changed instantly. The people laughed, sang and danced. So it is said that lyric poetry came into the world.

 

Rolf Riehm has entrusted this story to a cello—or, more precisely, to a cellist—who, in a rapid succession of roles, embodies the river, the singing head, inner and passing outer landscapes, the sea, despondent flora and fauna, dance, joy, and the many shifting moods that can be heard in a melancholic undercurrent but cannot be described. That reality is characterised by the extreme incoherence of its constituents is surely an ancient insight, recorded by Heraclitus. Yet we can never come to terms with it, because it contradicts our ever-coherent perception.
(Source: Wergo)