Henze: Das Floss der Medusa / Nylund, Schone, Eotvos, SWR Sinfonie Orchester
SWR
CD
$10.49$20.99Save 50%Sep 13, 2019
A 2019 New York Times Gift Guide Selection
This is the second release ever of Henzes famous Oratorio, after the release of the general rehearsal for the world's first premiere from 1968 by Deutsche Grammophon. Excellent sound technique, first class singers and orchestra (conducted by none other than Peter Eötvös) as well as a booklet containing detailed liner notes and the libretto contribute in making this album a very important testimony about the music of the 20th century. Henze wrote the Oratorio as a Requiem for Che Guevara and set it to a text by Ernst Schnabel. It tells the story of the French frigate Meduse, which ran aground off the west coast of Africa in 1816, immortalized in the painting of the same name by Theodore Gericault. The work employs a large orchestra, a speaker, a soprano, a baritone, and choruses. In the course of a performance, the chorus members move from left side of the stage, “the Side of the Living,” to the right side, “the Side of the Dead.”
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REVIEWS:
Looking for that special something for that special someone this holiday?
Flowers? Those die.
Jewelry? Too bougie.
A day at the spa? Namaste!
An hour-long modernist requiem on the death of Che Guevara featuring a head of snakes, sung/spoken/sprechtimme’d IN GERMAN? Dear, you are so generous. I cannot possibly repay the kindness.
– New York Times 2019 Gift Guide
Anyone who wants to know Henze or know him better would be well-served and enlivened by this one. And it would be a valuable addition to the confirmed Henze fan's library. Recommended.
German composer Hans Werner Henze’s (1926–2012) admiration for the great masters of the Baroque and musical Classicism manifested in compositions born from a desire to transcribe, rework and transform 17th- and 18th-century masterpieces into new orchestral textures. The project Travestimenti (Disguises), managed by conductor Marco Angius and the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, from which this CD was created, makes reference to Henze’s ‘reinventions’ of masterpieces by Mozart, C.P.E. Bach and Vitali, clothed in new, modern fashion.
For the Drei Mozart’sche Orgelsonaten, Henze takes up three of Mozart’s one-movement Kirchensonaten (church sonatas or trio sonatas). Sonatas 17 and 15 are in an Allegro tempo, whereas the Sonata K.67 is marked Andantino, so Henze, in his transcription, places the latter between the two livelier tempos, thus reconstructing the tripartite structure of a classical three-movement sonata. Scored for an ensemble of 14 players that includes the less common, softer variants oboe d’amore and viola d’amore, it aims to underline the darker instrumental timbres, favouring the sombre sonorities of the alto flute in G, the bass flute in C, the bass clarinet and the bassoon. During the last year of his life, in 1787, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach composed a Fantasia libera per tastiera sola (Free Fantasia for keyboard alone) which he expanded into the Clavier-Fantasie mit Begleitung einer Violine (Fantasy for harpsichord with violin accompaniment), one of his most personal and expressive works.
Henze transcribed it for solo flute, harp and strings, aiming to project the extremely interesting and expressive harmonic material of the composition into a larger instrumental apparatus, thus making its future-oriented harmonic structures more manifest and moulded. He proposed two options for division of the: string quartet + string quintet or string quartet + tutti (the latter version is recorded here).
Although it was probably composed in the early 18th century, Vitali’s Ciaccona ‘Il Vitalino’ – whose musical form is inspired by dance and consists of variations on a ground bass – was only rediscovered in 1867, published by the German virtuoso violinist Ferdinand David. Henze’s Il Vitalino raddoppiato – called “raddoppiato” (“doubled”) because of his extension of the composition by means of interpolated variations of each original section in the style of 18th-century doubles – retains Vitali’s bass almost throughout the entire composition. It alternates Vitali’s variations on his chaconne theme with Henze’s variations of Vitali’s variations, in an ever-changing dialogue between the 18th-century past and Henze’s present.
There is no doubt that the present album has ane specially personal meaning for Juliane Banse, because it celebrates her many years of association with all three composers, Wolfgang Rihm, Aribert Reimann and Hans Werner Henze. Juliane Banse met these composers at the beginning of ther career and still enjoys a close friendship with them. A close collaboration has led over the years to the premiere of many of their works. It is not surprising that Reimann's "Drei Gedicht der Sappho" and Rihm's "Aria/Ariadne" are dedicated to her and the Munich Chamber Orchestra; Although Juliane Banse did not have regular contact with the composers during the period when these works were written, she says she had complete confidence that the pieces would be composed with her in minda nd appropriate for her voice. The finished works justified this confidence. The third piece on this album was written before Juliane Banse was born, but she does have a connection to Hans-Werner Henze: in the opera "L'Upupa und der Triuph der Sohnesliebe", from 2003, Henze wrote a role especially for her voice, and she was intensely involved in the compositional process.
Hans Werner Henze was initially an avant-garde composer but Nachtstücke und Arien symbolised his departure from dodecaphonic writing, to the annoyance of his contemporaries Boulez, Nono and Stockhausen at Darmstadt. With this new direction Henze’s music became highly rhapsodic, as heard in the challenging but lyrical solo cello that suggests the intimate texts of the Englische Liebeslieder. Referring to Goya, Los Caprichos captures the strangeness of this artist’s visions with long-breathed melodic lines and fleeting changes of texture, from military-sounding bustle to moments of profound stillness. Marin Alsop is chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, which she leads at Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverein, and on recordings, broadcasts and tours. Her discography includes acclaimed Naxos recordings of symphonies by Brahms with the London Philharmonic, Dvořák with the Baltimore Symphony, and Prokofiev with the São Paulo Symphony. The first and only conductor to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, Alsop received the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award and was the first woman to conduct the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms. She is director of graduate conducting at the Peabody Institute and holds honorary doctorates from Yale University and The Juilliard School.
REVIEW:
Hans Werner Henze's rigorously constructed and orchestrated works require careful and well-prepared performances, and that’s just what they get here from conductor Marin Alsop and the Vienna Radio Symphony. This might, in fact, make a good initial Henze album, for it leads the listener into his music in a logical way. All three pieces respond to extramusical models in different ways. He is not everybody’s cup of tea, but this release realizes his ideas exceptionally well.
