Homage to a free spirit

Wolfgang Rihm is one of the great German composers. To mark his 70th birthday, Eleonore Büning describes the life and work of this phenomenal musician—a biography shaped by her expertise on music and her friendship with the composer.
Wolfgang Rihm has composed more pieces than Mozart by now. The diversity and sensual power of his music is based on an emphatic commitment to the freedom of art. His oeuvre is omnipresent in all European concert halls and the world’s opera houses. He has shaped the way we presently think about music like no other, not just with his compositions but also through his writings, in sound and action. Eleonore Büning’s Crossing the Line is the first book to shed light on Rihm’s life and work. A portrait that immerses the reader in the sound of new music.

»Elenore Büning is a true old-school critic with her own opinions and her very own style.«
Maxim Biller, DIE ZEIT

»A biography characterized by her [the author’s] knowledge of music and friendship with the person portrayed«
ndr.de

»Wolfgang Rihm is an exceptional phenomenon«
Tagesspiegel

»Apart from his partner, no woman knows him as well as Eleonore Büning.«
Münchner Merkur

»Through her extensive knowledge of music and long-standing friendship with the portrayed, she succeeds in creating a depiction of the composer that is as well-founded as it is personal.«
Western News

»She skilfully, intensely, even at an almost Beethovenian pace, combines biographical information with commentaries on the works in less musicological than feuilletonistic jargon.«
Deutschlandfunk Musikjournal

»Her smoothly flowing, but therefore never harmless, embellishing narrative tone is a pleasure to read (…)«
ORF Radio Ö1 “Zeit-Ton”

»(The biography) can be read as a compendium of new music of the last fifty years. (…) a magnificent panorama of European musical life.«
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»With her insights into Rihm’s life and work, she manages to write a congenial work, because she writes about what he is, what and who influenced him and whom he influenced, from the same receptive, arranging and expressive spirit that characterises Rihm. «
Die Tagespost

»Both Büning and Rihm, are not only friends, their creativity follows the same pattern. That is why this book is so worth reading.«
Die Tagespost