Meet Germany’s Top Contemporary Composer: He’ll Communicate Only By Fax

When David Patrick Stearns set up his interview with Wolfgang Rihm, these were the conditions he was given: “No phone calls. No e-mail. Only questions submitted (in English) by fax and returned by fax, on handwritten pages – in German.” Says Donald Nally, who’s conducting a major work of Rihm’s this weekend in Philadelphia and New York, “I envy someone living in a different century like that.”