Henze's music first
crossed my path with a Proms broadcast
performance of his Guéricault-inspired
Raft of the Medusa circa 1973
- anyone care to give date specifics.
I was at that time fascinated by the
spiny bristling nature of the score
and its violence. Its dissonance was
completely out of tune with my then
developing interest in the English and
Scandinavian late-romantics. I had only
just become interested in 'classical
music' and had ‘other priorities’. I
noticed then the two - or was it three
- LP DG collection of his first
six symphonies but did not rush after
the experience.
Henze's break from
the rigours of Darmstadt serialism came
circa 1953 and coincided with his move
to Italy. The Italian titles of two
of these works also bear this out.
The Symphony No.
10 has a heartfelt Hymnus framed
by a stunningly violent first movement
and an equally riled war dance of a
third movement. In fact that third movement
had me thinking of Grainger's revolutionary
ballet The Warriors. The first
movement Ein Sturm is not quite
as onomatopoeic as the similar works
by Nystroem and Sibelius - both inspired
by Shakespeare's The Tempest. The
Henze movement was not related to Shakespeare.
All the music here is freely dissonant
yet not fragmented. Henze holds true
to the ‘long line’ in his thinking and
expression.
The Montpellier orchestra
know the music well for they give a
virtuoso performance not just in the
splenetic furies of the first, third
and final movements but also in the
reflective and sometimes pained Hymnus
and in much of the first part of the
chimeric finale (Ein Traum).
The voices in Henze's music include
Berg and Stravinsky. It will certainly
appeal if you enjoy the symphonies of
Benjamin Frankel. In the finale the
valedictory curvature of the music from
berserker ire down to a gentle lapping
is memorable.
The Tenth Symphony
arose from a double source. Paul Sacher
was the principal commissioner. However
Sir Simon Rattle (a long time champion
of Henze) had also been looking for
an orchestral work. Rattle premiered
the first movement with the CBSO on
30 March 2000 in Birmingham with the
whole work launched at the Lucerne Festival
on 17 August 2002.
Apparently the premiere
(Frankfurt, 1955) of the brief Quattro
Poemi, as conducted by Stokowski,
was a disaster. The technical difficulties
foxed conductor and musicians. The four
movement is diffuse and fragmented in
its expressive ‘line’. Dissonance is
very assertive although there an engaging
and skipping playfulness to the Egloga
(more a ‘chasse’ than a rural idyll).
The Elegia is outright in its
sour sadness. The music is related to
that of his second opera König
Hirsch.
La Selva Incantata
(The enchanted forest) is
a medley drawn many years later from
the material of three scenes from act
II of the Gozzi-based König
Hirsch. Written in 1991 its evolutionary
approach is developed, continuity of
lyrical line is in unequivocal dominance.
While the winding sheet of dodecaphony
is in evidence it is there as an accent
the linguistic spine remains tunefully
accessible. This is very much a fantasy
overture mediating between the memory
of Henze the wild-man of the avant-garde
and Henze the lyrical communicator and
even Henze the humorist.
These are live performances
complete with applause in the case of
the symphony. The audience is otherwise
tacit.
The whole product is
completed by better than creditable
notes by Dorian Astor extremely lucidly
translated by John Tyler Tuttle.
This is an invaluable
and generous disc including two-Italian
titled works which I do not recall seeing
otherwise recorded. An important anthology
with Henze's most recent symphony coupled
with a work of his confident feral fifties
and a brilliant jeu d'esprit from
the 1990s.
Rob Barnett
HENZE'S SYMPHONIES
Symphony No. 1 (1947)
Symphony No. 2 (1949)
Symphony No. 3 (1949-50))
Symphony No. 4 (in one movement) (1955)
Symphony No. 5 (1962)
Symphony No. 6 for two chamber orchestras
(1969)
Symphony No. 7 (1983-84)
Symphony No. 8 A Midsummer Night's Dream
(1992-93)
Symphony No. 9 (1995-97)
Symphony No. 10 (1997-2000)
Orchestra National de Montpellier/Friedemann
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