photo: intermezzo.typepad.com
Sad news - the composer many of us considered the greatest of his generation died earlier today in Dresden at the age of 86.
The city has just begun a season-long celebration of his work with a scheduled performance this evening of his ballet music Das Vokaltuch der Kammersängerin Rosa Silber accompanied, fittingly for a composer always open to change, by brand new choreography.
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Phaedra - Barbican, 17 January 2010
Life imitated art in the most extraordinary and devastating way possible while Hans Werner Henze was writing Phaedra. Having dispatched his hero, Hippolytus, to the great beyond at the end of Act I, Henze himself was struck down with a mysterious, paralysing illness. For two months friends arrived at his bedside to pay their final farewells to the great composer. Then, just as suddenly and mysteriously as it began, the illness ended. Henze was on his feet again and ready to compose the second and final act - appropriately enough, the resuscitation and rebirth of Hippolytus.
The difference between the two acts – performed without a break at the Barbican – is marked. The first, mostly atonal, sets a brutally elegant retelling of the Phaedra myth in Christian Lehnert's strange and elliptical poetry. The second offers a dreamy, often rapturous vision of an afterlife. Resurrected by the goddess Artemis, Hippolytus is caged and renamed. He can’t remember his earlier life, but even so, Phaedra can’t lure him into the Underworld. Finally the Minotaur – until then a subliminal presence – actually appears, and Hippolytus is transformed into the King of the Forest (an echo of the Fourth Symphony, heard the day before).
Is Hippolytus really alive again, or is this a dream - or perhaps a wishful memory? The libretto doesn’t provide easy answers, and Henze resists a musical resolution. With just 23 musicians, and only four of them strings, he alternates scalding atonal density with yearning glimpses of delicate and nostalgic tonality.
The five singers, scoreless, circled the tightly-packed Ensemble Modern in the centre of the stage, but their movement did little to elucidate the cryptic tale. This performance, the UK’s first, brought together the cast from 2007’s Berlin premiere. John Mark Ainsley, looking more Henze-like the older he gets, sang the part of Hippolytus with great beauty and a sensitive ear for text. That Artemis was portrayed by a man, countertenor Axel Köhler, seemed almost irrelevant. Köhler’s rich, firm tone disabused any notions of camp. Maria Riccarda Wesseling’s Phaedra was vivid and human, Marlis Petersen’s Aphrodite exquisitely sung.
All the vocal writing is very testing in terms of range and coloratura, so it's to all the cast's credit that it never sounded less than easy. The multi-instrumentalists of the Ensemble Modern too made light work of a challenging score which called for a host of rumbling giants like the bass trombone, bass clarinet and even the anaconda-shaped contrabass clarinet.
Perhaps they were all encouraged to give that extra ounce more by the beatific presence of Henze himself, concluding his weekend in London with a standing ovation that perhaps acknowledged not just the evening's performance but everything he's given to music over the years.
yes, that IS you-know-who's head:
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Hans Werner Henze day - Barbican, 16 January 2010
I'm sure I can't have been the only one for whom the highlight of the Barbican's Hans Werner Henze day was simply seeing (and briefly meeting!) the great man himself. His presence was all the more remarkable for the effort it must have cost him. His recent interviews and indeed his recent work demonstrate he's still bright as a button, but his stooped and frail frame is supported by a stick on one side and a helper on the other. He moves with the slow deliberation of a serene and venerable Galapagos tortoise, replete with ancient wisdom. Only the twinkling eyes beneath the great bald brow betray the acute intelligence beneath.
But he made it to both of the day's concerts, raising himself to his feet to receive the applause of the audiences - the latter one including his recent collaborators Tony Pappano and Ian Bostridge.
The day's events were well-planned to display the breadth and depth of Henze's work, though the advance publicity didn't make this clear in a way that anyone unfamiliar with his music might understand. Though he is in fact one of the most lyrical and melodic composers of his generation, people automatically expect a living composer to produce 'Pelleas-like atonal crap' (thank you, anonymous commentator) unless they're advised otherwise. So the audience, as far as I could tell, included few exploring Henze's music for the first time, a great shame.
I skipped the two films shown because I have them on a single DVD and couldn't see the point of spending more money to watch them on the Barbican's postage stamp-sized Screen 2
The first of the day's two concerts featured student musicians and vocal soloists from the Guildhall in an accomplished lunchtime performance of Henze's 1973 vocal cycle Voices. It's a demanding work when performed by one tenor and one mezzo - the range of styles as well as tessitura is vast. But when distributed amongst a number of soloists as it was here it becomes a manageable showcase for a variety of strengths.
The students were well-cast and well-prepared and managed between them everything from cabaret to sprechgesang. The musicians too, many of them obliged to double up on the unsymphonic likes of recorder and mandolin, did an excellent job with a score originally written for the virtuosic London Sinfonietta. And their earnest enthusiasm for some of the more dated sound effects they were required to produce (like a bursting balloon and massed humming) stood in refreshing contrast to the Sinfonietta's knowingly embarrassed efforts at their Proms performance a couple or so years ago. An inspiring performance in which the message of peace and hope triumphed over any agitprop undertones.
With Henze's solo vocal writing thus covered, the evening concert was split into three sections to showcase three more kinds of work - piano, orchestral and choral.
The piano section, though well played by Huw Watkins, tended to demonstrate why comparatively little of Henze's prodigious output has been devoted to the instrument. His skills and probably his interests tend to the colouristic, and the black and white palette of the piano offers little in this respect. Perhaps the most revealing work of the four played was the early (1948) 12 tone work, Variations. Displaying a Berg-like nose for the melody buried within the tone row, Henze finds tune after tune, ending in telling repose with a tonal chord.
Another early work, the 1955 Fourth Symphony, displayed his narrative gifts in music lifted and adapted from his contemporaneous opera König Hirsch. Magnificently visualised by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Oliver Knussen (who always looks as if he comes to work by longship), it's a lushly romantic work, flavoured with bursts of Henze's favoured cor anglais, horn, harp and celesta.
But the work which made the most impact was the most recent. Elogium musicum, written in 2008 after the death of Henze's longtime companion Fausto Moroni, sets a Latin text by the poet Franco Serpa in an almost continuous choral chant accompanied by string quartet and a modest orchestra. Two falcons fly together until one suddenly falls to earth. The other one flies away, heartbroken.
The four movements traverse lamentation, rage, recollection and finally benediction and a sort of renewal as Fausto reappears in a haunting yet uplifting saxophone phrase right at the end. But the real renewal is Henze's courageous yet perhaps liberating transformation of his devastating loss into this powerful work of art.
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There's not much happening in London right now except the white stuff, but the city springs into musical life later in the month. The final week of January in particular offers a pile up of competing attractions.
The first event in my January calendar is Elektra, in concert at the Barbican on 12 and 14 January. Valery Gergiev and the LSO are joined by a fabulous cast - Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet, Angela Denoke, Felicity Palmer, Matthias Goerne and Ian Storey.
Music and movies are on the menu for the Barbican's 16 January Hans Werner Henze day, followed on 17 January by the UK premiere of Phaedra.
At the Royal Festival Hall, the Anna Netrebko and Dmitri Hvorostovsky recital on 18 January is sold out, but there may be returns on the date.
The Rake's Progress opens on 22 January at the Royal Opera House, the second run for Robert Lepage's disappointingly half-baked production. The casting is superb though - after a few dropouts the final line-up centres around Toby Spence, Rosemary Joshua, Kyle Ketelsen and Patricia Bardon, with Ingo Metzmacher conducting.
The second Covent Garden opening of the month is Jonathan Miller's Cosi Fan Tutte, conducted by Julia Jones. Yes, a lady in the pit. Sally Matthews's Fiordiligi looks like the pick of the casting.
29 January sees the first of Daniel Barenboim's Beethoven piano concerto series at the Royal Festival Hall, with the rest following over the week. Sold out, of course, but all concerts will be relayed live (and free) to the Ballroom's big screen, and recorded for later broadcast on Radio 3.
Wigmore Hall offers Simon Keenlyside on his own on 22 and 25 and with Angelika Kirchschlager on 31 January for the Wigmore's annual celebration of Schubert's birthday. Joyce DiDonato appears on 26 and 28, and the Early Opera Company tackle Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno on 29 January with a cast including Lucy Crowe, Anna Stephany and Hilary Summers.
I missed the Birmingham premiere of Luke Bedford's Good Dream She Has thanks to Virgin Rail's incompetence, so I'm looking forward to hearing it in BCMG's interesting 24 January Wigmore Hall programme.
The mini-St Paul's acoustic of King's Place makes it one of my least favourite venues for vocal music, but their Vienna to Weimar Festival in the last week of January is worth checking out. The pick is a song recital on 27 January from Christian Immler and Helmut Deutsch, featuring rarely-performed works by Eisler, Gàl, Goldschmidt, Korngold, Krenek, Schreker and Zemlinsky.
And the final last week scheduling conflict comes from the Roundhouse. Their cross-platform Reverb minifest includes Joanna McGregor, the Britten Sinfonia and the OAE sharing their performing space with the less classically-inclined. A piano day on 31 January includes recitals from the Labeque sisters and Rolf Hinds. Finally - approach with caution - Charles Hazlewood rethinks the Beggar's Opera on 25 January "from songs recreated exactly as they would have sounded to groove-laden walls of psychedelia."
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Prom 45: BBCSO/Oliver Knussen/Leila Josefowicz - Royal Albert Hall, 17 August 2007
Schoenberg Five Orchestral Pieces Op.16
Oliver Knussen Violin Concerto
Hans Werner Henze Sebastian im Traum Stravinsky The Rite of Spring
You'd probably rather look at a photo of tonight's winsome soloist Leila Josefowicz than the ursine charms of conductor Oliver Knussen but sadly she moved too quickly to get a decent shot in. Anyway, I can report that she wore a stunning loose white spaghetti strapped dress with a blue ombré bodice and a wide brownish sash tight around her waist.
She gave a poised and delicate reading of the appealing Knussen concerto, which allows the soloist barely a second's breathing space. From mid-arena, her instrument had a surprisingly small sound, though this is not apparent on the Radio 3 recording (available for 1 week), where the sound balance emphasises front of stage.
Before this, Knussen gave a typically meticulous and detailed reading of the Schoenberg, all the subtle changes of balance and texture carefully drawn out.
Henze's Sebastian im Traum was a UK premiere. After a sparsely-textured first section where tiny slivers of ideas pop up then slip gently away, it explodes into an intense core before returning once again to a more fragmentary style and an inconclusive ending. Knussen's modest and functional conducting style, all clean movement, kept it on an even keel. It was very well received by the sizeable (and much younger than usual) audience, prompting Knussen to raise the score in the air for some applause of its own.
The Stravinsky was taken at a blistering gallop, and not entirely free of errors, but it was a thrilling performance, making up in excitement for what it lacked in textbook precision. This too got plenty of applause, including a round for the score Knussen raised in his hand. Once again though, I feel the Radio 3 recording is unbalanced in favour of the front of stage.
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