Groundbreaking Hans Werner Henze - Das Floß der Medusa

Groundbreaking new recording of Hans Werner Henze's Das Floß der Medusa. What happened at the premiere in 1968 is so well known that the story almost eclipses the music. When I read about it in the newspapers (remember them ?) I had never even heard of Henze, but vowed to find out more, so impressed was I, even then, by his integrity and refusal to dumb down. Much less impressed by those who were happy to support him to further their careers but dropped him when he became too "hot". As if they didn't know Henze's politics when they agreed to take the gig ?  If anything, we can connect to Das Floß der Medusa now with even greater committment because we've seen situations like this repeated over and over in modern times.  When I reviewed the production conducted by Ingo Metzmacher in a thoughtful  staging by Romeo Castellucci  (Please read more here), I got attacked by someone who said that refugees in the Mediterranean should be annihilated because they threaten the European way of life.  Ironic that, given that some people wouldn't have been born had their ancestors not found refuge. Henze's message doesn't dim but grows more prophetic.

This new recording of Henze's Das Floß der Medusa, conducted by Peter Eötvös, is ground breaking because the performance is, if anything, even more intense and powerful,and the all-important narration even more passionate. It has a savagery that might have upset genteel audiences sixty years ago, but which we can now appreciate, since we know only too well that the horrors Henze describes are only too real.  An essential recording, which doesn't replace the first (recorded at a rehearsal).  Please read Marc Bridle's well informed and analytical review here in Opera Today. 

"...There are many things about this performance which just sound “right” – the acoustic, the clarity of the choral divisions, the spatial mystery of the work’s vision which alternates between horror and pathos. One could argue that the acoustic does little to emphasise the impact of contrast between life and death as the choruses move across the stage – this is, in one sense, an unremittingly darker performance than the one Henze gave us. Eötvös does, of course, use Henze’s 1990 revision of the score, one which tones down some of more obviously Marxist chants such as “Ho! Ho! Ho! Chi! Minh!” and there is clearly room today to interpret this oratorio beyond the events of the decade in which it was written. I think some performances of the work can still sound uncomfortable, perhaps this one doesn’t.

Peter Stein’s narrator (often the most difficult role to cast) is exceptional, but given his background this probably isn’t a surprise. This is such a nuanced, beautifully crafted reading of Charon it’s hard not to be persuaded by the mythology of the character. There is something Sophoclean about it, a depth which Henze didn’t particularly get from Regnier.
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Landmark ! Henze The Raft of the Medusa Metzmacher

A landmark production of Hans Werner Henze's Das Floß der Medusa (The Raft of the Medusa) conducted by Ingo Metzmacher in Amsterdam earlier this month, with Dale Duesing (Charon), Bo Skovhus and Lenneke Ruiten, with Cappella Amsterdam, the Nieuw Amsterdams Kinderen Jeugdkoor, and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, in a powerfully perceptive staging by Romeo Castellucci.  Fifty years after its premiere, you'd expect that one of Henze's keynote works would be received with a bit more comprehension, but the complete lack of understanding exhibited by most of the press prove Henze was right.  In 1968, protesters disrupted the first public performance.  Henze could not stop the mobs, but was excoriated by the press.  Some performers, who should have known better, since the piece wass dedicated to Che Guevara) turned on Henze to save their skins.  Please read Henze's own words HERE)

Why such frenzy ?  Surely everyone knows Théodore Géricault's famous painting  of the raft, where Jean-Claude waves a red piece of cloth ?  Moreover, Géricault was painting when the wreck of the Medusa was still raw political scandal.  The rich had left the poor to die. What Géricault depicted was not lost on audiences at the time. The real horror is that modern audiences refuse to connect, even though we're surrounded by images or war, destruction and refugees drowing at sea.  Even if the press don't know Henze, which is bad enough, surely some might have the humanity to think ?  Traumatized after the debacle of the premiere, Henze wrote Versuch über Schweine a heartfelt scream of agony which  is even more valid now than it was then. 

Henze's The Raft of the Medusa was a political oratorio, hence its structure, which draws from Greek tragedy and also from Henze's hero, Benjamin Britten  (think Curlew River and The Rape of Lucretia).  This determines Castellucci's abstract staging . He knows the composer and the music better than his detractors do. This is a drama of ideas, not realism, and certainly not light entertainment.  In the Prologue, the facts, as known, are recited with the dry impartiality of a news reader. The narrator is Charon who, in Greek mythology, ferries the dead across the River Styx into the underworld.  That's why he's seen on a blank stage, holding an oar, or pulling what appears to be a string of light, which later appears in abstract forms at certain points in the production. As Charon, Dale Duesing's spoken German isn't perfect, but that doesn't matter.  He speaks with authority and the wisdom of one who has seen all too much suffering.  His musical instincts bring out the music in the Sprechstimme passages, where his delivery is crisp and incisive.  This is a drama where era and place don't count.  The French ship was wrecked off the coast off Senegal, then a French colony.  Now, millions risk death to escape to the west.  Castellucci is wise not to make  the connectioins too specific.  It's enough that we see a video of an African swimming, endlessly, in a vast ocean.  We can identify with him as Everyman, struggling in an alien and hostile environment.  

Charon describes the stage directions, but we don't need to see them literally.  Hearing disembodied voices call from the darkness is much more effective than clumsy movement on stage.  In any case, we can hear the change of balance as the "dead" grow louder and more dominant, and the "living" fade.  If we pay attention to the music, we can also hear the shift between winds (operated by human breath) to strings, something played with more wood than string.  Henze's gift for writing for mixed voices builds the choral lines with sensitivity : high male voices and even higher female voices swirl against deeper timbres.  We hear individual names, and use our imagination.  Images of the waves, and half-glimpsed faces further serve to focus attention on the drama in the music itself.  

And what music this is !  Haunting textures, swirling and surging, like the ocean, rumbling undercurrents, passages where woodwinds fly brightly, suggesting light, hope, the freedom of seabirds.  Henze himself conducted in 1968. Since the recording is based only on the reherasal, we really can't tell what it might have sounded like if the piece had time to breathe. Henze was too traumatized to return to it, though he made revisions in 1990.  Metzmacher is thus conducting Henze's last words, so to speak, and from the perspective of long experience. Often, a good interpreter has more perspective than a composer. Henze was a good conductor and would have appreciated Metzmacher's perceptive approach.

One of the striking things about The Raft of the Medusa is the way Henze portrays the passage of time.  Nights turn to day, hours drift by, and still the raft floats on a featureless horizon. The white lights in the production form as a horizontal line, suggesting the raft, teetering dangerously up and down on the waves, going nowhere. On the raft, the peoiple are confined, without resources, and gradually die. Individual bodies are seen, falling into the darkness.  Henze breaks the relentless monotony with the music. A woodwind solo fleetingly suggests hope, choral lines stretch, as if reaching into the distance.  The density in the orchestration  serves to evoke the teeming life and variety in the ocean and the world beyond, intensifying the contrast between life and death, and the helplessness of the shipwrecked people. 

Henze concentrates his focus on one character, the mulatto slave Jean-Claude, who in Géricault's painting stands at the apex of the human pyramid on the raft, a subtle but pointed comment on the social pecking order, even in Géricault's time. While others succumb, Jean-Claude holds the red piece of fabric, in  the hope that it will be seen by rescuers.  And then he dies. When Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau sang the part in 1968, the nobility of his delivery brought Christ-like pathos, which is fair enough, given that Jean-Claude sacrifices himself for his fellow man.  But Christ isn't the only one to have done so : ordinary people do extraordinary things more often than we realize. Jean-Claude isn't necessarily Jesus,  so Bo Skovhus's portrayal is probably much closer to Henze and to the secular, political character of the piece.  Skovhus expresses the human side of Jean-Claude, who has probably suffered his whole life through, but doesn't give up, even if it means his last breath. Skovhus's delivery is authoritative without being over-elaborate. On a raft, adrift, being high status doesn't get you anywhere.  Skovhus's Jean-Claude isn't rich or heroic, but he's a good man with honest common sense, which in a venal world confers its own sanctity.  Lenneke Ruiten sang Madame La Mort, who, like the Moon, mentioned in the text and depicted in the music, is elegant but impassive.  Ruiten stands apart from proceedings, as the Moon does, but observes.  Here, she's seen in a sou'wester, as sailors wear, which is fair enough, and fits well with the maritime imagery.   All in all, an exceptional experience, a shining beacon in an ocean of non-understanding, which will advance our appreciation of Henze, as composer and humanitarian thinker.  Listen and watch Henze's The Raft of The Medusa HERE on arte.tv

 

Hans Werner Henze : Orpheus Behind the Wire SWR Vokalensemble

Hans Werner Henze works for mixed voice and chamber orchestra with SWR Vokalensemble and Ensemble Modern, conducted by Marcus Creed. Welcome new recordings of important pieces like Lieder von einer Insel (1964), Orpheus Behind the Wire (1984) plus Fünf Madrigale (1947).  Calling these "choral" works is a misnomer, since Henze writes so well for vocal ensemble that the voices move as a unity and as individuals, like a parallel orchestra, voices interacting with instruments.
Such are the densities of vocal interaction in Orpheus Behind the Wire that Henze can dispense with orchestra altogether.  SATB form is stretched with such refinement that the voices are almost microparted, in 12 part a capella. The voices of the SWR Vokalensemble are so perfectly balanced that the singing seems to flow seamlessly,  the rich textures, enhanced with great depth. 

That sense of flowing movement is significant, for Orpheus Behind the Wire was created to be danced to.  Fluid movements, subtle changes which suggest constant evolution. This is music as Greek sculpture, form as clearly defined as muscles carved in marble, or the folds of garments on statues frozen mid-flow.  The progress across the five songs is formal, yet elegant and deliberate, as stylized as Greek art.  The text was written in 1978 by Edward Bond, and re-tells the story of Orpheus's journey to the Underworld in search of Eurydice with a modern twist : the idea of individuals caught up in situations beyond human control. Orpheus can never unite with Eurydice, but will forever remain alone and alienated from the world around him.  When Henze splits the four vocal groups into twelve individual voices, he unites meaning with musical form.

An otherworldy hum underpins the first song, What was hell like?, the vocal line shimmering on several levels. "No echo came from my music". The words “silence, silence" repeated like an echo spreading into empty distance.  Orpheus and Eurydice cannot travel together, but the physical death of one means the spiritual death of the other. Thus the long lines reaching out, but not connecting.  Undulating lines, where words are broken into particles and scattered, like dust in the wind, "silenced, silenced". This is deliberate irony.  The singing is pitch perfect and beautifully modulated but the sentences are hard to make out, for  this is the Underworld, where shadows deceive.  In Hades, meaning is shrouded. By breaking up the vocal line, Henze is using sound to capture the ambiguity. Like orpheus we must pay attention and feel our way.   Orpheus growsold, "more strings on this lyre than hairs on my head", but he is not free. Occasionally the men's voices dominate, but the mood is troubled.  At last, something stirs. "Pressed" the voices sing on an upbeat, "by the weight of the world".  Now tense, more anguished figures, a multiplicity of voices, their lines wavering in tumult.  The text draws hope that "somewhere the starving have taken bread/from those who argue the moral of guns/ in assemblies guarded by guns".  When the poor no longer shiver in rags, "Then I hear music of Orpheus, of Triumph ! of Freedom!". In the dense layers of texture, the exact words aren't easy to make out, but that might be for the reason that freedom is not yet at hand, meaning must remain occluded, secretive, literally "Behind the Wire".

In Lieder von einer Insel, Henze recalled his close friendship with Ingeborg Bachmann.  She wriote the poems in the summer of 1953, when the pair had escaped to Italy, symbol of the "golden South" celebrated by Goethe and so many other northerners before and since.   Bachmann's poems are sunlit, but haunted : "Schattenfrüchte fallen von der Wanden". Henze's setting is dominated by celli, trombone and double bass, long, keening lines that suggest darkness. The voices sing in unison, the range of timbres creating a rich lustre.  The double bass leads the celli into a solemn dance.  The central song, Einmal muss das Fest ja kommen, resembles a festive procession, led by trombone and portative, a small portable organ with connotations of the Middle Ages, extended by simple percussion.  The male and female voices separate, singing alternate lines, the vocal parts then alternating with instrumental. The effect of a medieval celebration. But what celebration ? perhaps a brief Carneval before a period of mourning. ?  "...die Krater nicht rühn!"    Henze sets the men’s voices in the fourth song almost as plainchant, the women's voice high and piping like choirboys. Whoever leaves the island cannot return unless rituals are performed. The mood is sinister : the trombone wails, the portative groans.  The final song is deceptively simple, though the images are apocalyptic. "es ist ein Strom unter der Erde, der sengt das Gebein". And we shall bear witness.  When Henze set Bachmann's poems, she still had ten years to live, but he knew the dreams they'd had were doomed.
Based on translations of early French poetry, Henze's Fünf Madrigales is a lively mix of mock medievalism and modernism. He was only 21, just emerging from a youth in which music had to conform to Nazi taste.  Although it's an early work, we can already hear Henze's distinctive personality in embryo. 

Hans Werner Henze Kammermusik 1958 Scharoun Ensemble

 
"....In lieblicher Bläue" .  Landmark new recordings of  Hans Werner Henze Neue Volkslieder und Hirtengesänge  and Kammermusik 1958 from the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, with Andrew Staples, Markus Weidmann, Jürgen Rock and Daniel Harding.

A landmark recording because it reflects the Scharoun Ensemble's years of experience with Henze and his music. Their relationship began in 1983, shortly after the ensemble was formed. Kammermusik 1958 is one of their signature pieces. "It  soon became clear" they write "that the composer's interpretation of Kammermusik 1958 was freer than the written score. Henze took some tempi more slowly, which resulted in more songful, indeed quite romantic music". This performance is outstanding, more assured and more idiomatic than the original recording made in November 1958 with Peter Pears and Julian Bream. Though Henze himself conducted that premiere, he was young, still very much in thrall to Britten, Pears and their cliquey circles.  As Henze developed, he became himself, finding the freer, more poetic approach this recording honours.  Obviously the first recording is part of the archive, but this new performance opens horizons: very much in the spirit of the poetry of Hölderlin's text and of Henze's mature work.  This performance  also uses Henze's 1963 revision of the score. 
Kammermusik 1958 is also a landmark because it represents a  period in which Henze made a creative breakthrough.  It connects to the sensuality of Undine and to the esoteric Being Beauteous, but also explores ideas which Henze would develop in later years.  The piece begins with a horn call, which is repeated more quietly, as if in response - a deliberate reference to Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings. Almost immediately, though, Henze breaks into new territory - long, shimmering lines that seem to stretch into endless space. The clarinet leads, like the call of a shepherd's flute sounding out over distance.

From this evolves the first song with its long, arching lines that rise expansively, accompanied by guitar.  The text is abstract, almost impressionistic in its evocation of colour and mood. ."In lieblicher Blue blühet mit dem metallenen Dache der Kirchtum."  Hölderlin in his tower, singing to the moon,  Andrew Staples and Jürgen Rock, eternal troubadours.   Hölderlin's poetry fascinates modern composers.This particular hymn has also been set by Wilhelm Killmayer and Julian Anderson (whose version will be heard  21/10/17 at the Barbican.)  Staples's singing is pristine, for "Reinheit aber ist auch Schönheit". Two Tentos for solo guitar frame the second song in which Henze sets another section of Hölderlin's hymn.  Innen aus verschiedenem entsteht, where the poet connects humble mankind with the vastness of the universe.   "als der Mensch, der heisset ein Bild der Gottheit". Rock's playing creates intimacy, cradling the song with protective warmth. It also recreates the flowing rhythms of Tento I which Henze titled "Du schönes Bächlein"   a reference to images in the text, which resurface in the third song, where the pace picks up.   Staples sings the phrase "Du schönes Bächlein" with minimal accompaniment, as if the poet were transfixed by a vision.
As the voice falls silent, the ensemble emerge in a short Sonata for the ensemble, brisk, turbulent figures that seem to have a life of their own.  "Möcht ich ein Komet sein?" Staples sings.  Key phrases like  "eine schöne Jungfrau" deliciously savoured. The final line "Myrten aber gibt es in Greichenland" shone with intense light, for this epitomizes Hölderlin's  concepts of beauty, from the ideals of antiquity far into the future.  For Henze, the guitar is more than a “Mediterranean" device. It connects to the lute of Orpheus and all that implied in classical mythology.  An inventive cadenza, where the strings dance and cor and bassoon moan, until strong chords in ensemble introduce the next song, "Wenn einer in den Spiegel siehet".  which flows  with great freedom, as if the clarity of the  mirror were drawing ideas into sharper focus.  The tento for guitar, which follows, is titled "Sohn Laios" which connects to the references to Oedipus in this and the final song, "Wie Bäche reißt des Ende von Etwas mich dahin".  Henze  creates a stream of consciousness, weaving text, music, ideas and images together in a stream that's at once elusive yet intriguing.  Hölderlin contemplates the destiny of suffering. "Leben ist Tod , und Tod ist auch ein Leben". Long, plaintive vocal lines,yet oddly  affirmative, merging into a beautiful wind melody, which might suggest ancient flutes. Horn, cor, bassoon and contrabass create mysterious atmosphere, lightened by strings. This last Epilogue, added by Henze in1963, is extraordinarily moving, very "inwards", true to Hölderlin and his visionary imagination.  In the notes, Jürgen Rock comments on the connections between the Oedipus legend and Henze's socio-political views and his work in music theatre.  In some ways, the Oedipus theme might also apply to other things in Henze's life,including his relationship to Britten. 
The Scharoun Ensemble Berlin paired this Henze Kammermusik 1958 with Henze's Neue Volkslieder und Hirtengesänge  (1983/1996) for Bassoon, Guitar and String Trio. Excellent choice, for these extend the idea of Arcadian "Shepherd" songs and fit well with Hölderlin.  These songs were premiered by the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin in 1997, presumably with Henze himself in attendance.   

Unfinished Business: London Sinfonietta 50 years

"Thank goodness for the London Sinfonietta!" (as the London Sinfonietta quotes me on the front page of their website. True, indeed ! without the London Sinfonietta, music in this country would have been dull indeed. The London Sinfonietta were pioneers, much more than "just" an ensemble. They were a powerhouse of creative, innovative thinking, generating a sea change in musical thinking which continues to flourish today.  Thus Unfinished Business, marking the forthcoming 50th anniversary of the London Sinfonietta, which starts Wednesday 11th October at St John’s Smith Square, starts with Hans Werner Henze's iconic Voices. Henze  himself conducted it with the Sinfonietta on their 1978 recording, re-released a few years ago. Please read my summary here.
 
Henze was closely associated with the London Sinfonietta who played a lot of his music, composer and orchestra both defined by the events of 1968.  They hosted a major retrospective to mark his 75th birthday, which is when I  met him.  He was a lion, but kind hearted enough to be nice to a nobody like me.  Henze is dead, but not forgotten. Currently I'm enjoying a new recording of his Neue Volkslieder und Hirtengesänge  and Kammermusik 1958 with Andrew Staples and the Sharoun Ensemble Berlin, conducted by Daniel Harding - it's wonderful, read more here.  This time round, David Atherton conducts Voices.  He's a Sinfonietta veteran too : the concert should be an almost historic occasion. 

Later in the season, Iannis Xenakis, Luciano Berio, Harrison Bitwistle, Gyorgy Ligeti, Wolfgang Rihm, Karlheinz Stockhausen and others, just a few of the numerous composers who have been associated with the ensemble from way back. The London Sinfonietta has a lot to be proud of !   A welcome return to its Glory Days, when it presented excellence with style and commitment.  For a while, it seemed that the ethos had changed. Governments promote the idea that orchestras should make education a priority but that's a political argument, not artistic logic.  If governments really cared about education they';d fund it in the first place, and let orchestras do what they do best., which is make music that inspires listeners to learn.   Excellence itself "is" education.  Please see a few of the numerous concerts and recordings I've covered over the years, including:
Beat Furrer FAMA 2016

Hans Abraham Schnee Simon Holt

George Benjamin Into the Little Hill

Stockhausen Trans und Harmonien

  and loads more ........click on composer names

Detlev Glanert : Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch

Detlev Glanert's Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch should be a huge hit.  Just as Carl Orff's Carmina Burana appeals to audiences who don't listen to early music (or even to much classical music), Glanert's Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch has all the elements for instant popular success.  It helps that the paintings are so much part of popular culture that everyone recognizes his images of extreme excess.  Bosch's people wear medieval dress, but their actions depict the subconscious, the Id and existential guilt in operation, centuries before the concepts of psychology found expression in formal language.

Like Carnina Burana, Glanert's Requiem is highly dramatic music theatre, adapting the cataclysmic dreamscapes of Bosch's paintings into music of extremes as lurid as Bosch's images.  Glanert's Requiem unfolds in 18 episodes, rather like panels in a medieval triptych. This gives the piece structure, making it easy to follow. The teeming, sprawling  panoramas Bosch depicts could plausibly be depicted in sound, but that would probably be asking too much of most audiences.  Like Bosch, though, Glanert's piece replicates extremes. Literally heaven and hell, for the premise is the judgement Bosch faces after death.  Thus the standard elements of a Requiem Mass are interleaved with the Seven Deadly Sins.  The acrid flames of hellfire whipping against the smoke of incense.

A harsh Voice (David Wilson-Johnson, narrating) calls from above "Hieronymus Bosch!" Immediately we spring to attention.  Bells ring,. Throbbing, rushing figures in the choral line, suggesting the doomed hordes we see in Bosch's paintings. The orchestral lines veer wildly, lit by screaming brass, the chorus screaming to crescendo.   Suddenly the forces fragment and, from the silence, a slow, low penitential intonation.  An abstract Requiem Aeternam, the choral line flowing ambiguously, in almost microtonal haze. like smoke.  In Gluttony the bass (the aptly named Christof Fischesser) sings of food, his lines circular and rotund. The text may be in Latin, but the meaning is clear.  The choir responds with the long, thin lines of an Absolve Domine. reinforced by Wrath with tenor (Gerhard Siegel)  and a Dies Irae which ends with a vivid orchestral flourish. Another demon, Envy, fights back. Soprano Aga Mikolaj's fluid, curving lines mimic the lines in the "heavenly" chorus - imitation is a sign of envy!

But the serene  Juste judex prevails. But where are we? The organ solo (Leo van Doeselaar) lets rip with a frenzy that suggests a cathedral organ hijacked by Satan.  Despite the extremes of volume and tempi, the lines between heaven and hell are, tellingly, blurred. In Sloth, the soprano sings langorously, joined in sensuous duet by the mezzo (Ursula Hesse von den Steinen). Pride, Lust and Avarice appear, but the balance shifts towards the big guns : Full choir, offstage choir, and orchestra in increasingly full throttle : listen for the jazzy culmination of the Domine Jesu Christe. and the funky trumpet that heralds the Agnus Dei.

With the Libera Me and Peccatum, we are in Carmina Burana territory, bursting forth in a blaze, the earthly chorus in raucuous flow, augmented by brass and percussion and the offstage chorus singing of lux perpetua.  Big forces. But is might right ? Glanert's Requiem ends In Paradisium, here the Voice from Above recites lines from the Book of Revelation. Apocalyptic visions, marking the end of the world and of time.  Now, when the Voice screams "Hieronymus!", he doesn't add a demonic epithet.  With an unearthly low hum, the choir sings of the chorus angelorum that brings eternal rest.

Glanert's Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch was commissioned to celebrate Bosch's 500th anniversary, and premiered in Sint Janskathedraal, 's-Hertogenbosch, in April 2016.   So it's  a public piece rather than a work of inward inspiration.  It must be great fun to perform, without being particularly demanding, technically or interpretively.  It could, in theory, be performed elsewhere, much as Carmina Burana is, these days. It is admirably performed on this world premiere recording made in November 2016 with the top-notch Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, conducted by Markus Stenz. 

Glanert was one of Hans Werner Henze's few disciples. Henze's political beliefs influenced his music,though he never sacrificed high artistic and intellectual standards. Glanert is a man of the theatre, too, with a more earthy sense of humour than Henze had, though that quirkiness isn't too obvious.  When  the ENO did Glanert';s opera Caligula, London audiences just couldn't get it.  (Please read HERE what I wrote about Caligula, which I first heard in Frankfurt).  In this Bosch Requiem, Glanert again mixes grotesque with irony. Just as the vastness of Carmina Burana appealed to Nazi taste, the vastness of   this Requiem veers on parody.  Will it be loved for its vulgarity or its irony?  Just as the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch reveal the viewer, Glanert's Requiem reveals the listener.  Please see my other pieces on Glanert and on Hans Werner Henze, click on labels below)  

Welsh National Opera 2013-2014 analysis + touring

The Welsh National Opera 2013-2014 booklet has arrived. All operas can be heard at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff (pictured here, photo courtesy Thomas Deusing, San Antonio).  Although Cardiff is easily reached by train or road, many WNO productions tour, and the booklet's invaluable in tracking down what's on where.

The three Donizetti Tudor operas are being presented together : Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux. Each is interesting in its own right but hearing them together as a trilogy will enhance their impact. It's a brilliant idea!  It would be pointless for Wales to upstage London in Britten year, someone at WNO deserves great praise. It's much more satisfying, I think, to immerse in depth like this. Besides, the Tudors were originally Welsh, so WNO is connecting to Welsh history even if it's through the ears of an Italian. Tosca is on, too, around the same time, for contrast. The series starts in September in Cardiff, running through October. The Donizetti triology is also touring to Swansea, Oxford, Liverpool, Bristol, Birmingham, Llandudno and Southampton.  It's not coming near London, so Londoners might want to study the Cardiff dates.

In Spring 2014, a series on "Fallen Women" :  Manon Lescaut, La Traviata and much more unusual Hans Werner Henze's Boulevard Solitude. Lothar Koenigs, Music Director at WNO, says "Alongside Britten, Henze is surely the most important representative of opera in the 20th century". Boulevard Solitude (1951) was last heard in the UK at ROH some ten years ago, though it's heard frequently in Germany. There's at least one DVD. The WNO production will, of course, be new. The director is Mariusz Trelinski. Boulevard Soiltude connects to Manon Lescaut because it's a re-telling of the Abbé Prévost story. Henze had grown up during the Third Reich when "modern" music and jazz were banned. Still only in his mid 20's, Henze used the story to explore what to him were still "new" forms. Henze's music is fairly accessible, so even conservative audfiences won't find Boulevard Solitude too difficult. The "fallen women" series travels to Birmingham, Milton Keynes, Southampton, Plymouth, Llandudno,  and Bristol.

Then WNO mounts a real challenge: Arnold Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, in Cardiff from 24th  May 2014, in Birmingham on 7 June and at the Royal Opera House, London, from 25th July. This will be the staging by Jossi Weiler and Sergio Morabito, first heard in Stuttgart ten years ago.  There's an audio recording of a later production. Moses und Aron is being paired with Verdi's Nabucco. The production was first seen in Stuttgart in January 2013, and ended its run last week. The director is Rudolf Frey. It's astute of WNO to pair the two operas because Nabucco is not, as some London critics think, a hymn to false gods and graven images but a statement of faith in an austere, enduring God. Follow this link to more information and production photos. There's a gaudy golden backcloth for those who need glitz. 

Also intriguing will be the Edgar Allan Poe double bill directed by David Pountney in 2014. Claude Debussy’s unfinished one-act opera The Fall of the House of Usher has been orchestrated by Robert Orledge, using additional material from sketches left by Debussy. It will be heard with Gordon Getty’s Usher House. Both will be presented in San Francisco in 2015. The picture right is Harry Clarke's illustration from an early French edition of Poe's poem. David Pountney directs.

Mark Anthony Turnage's Greek returns in the 2011 Music Theatre Wales production, which will also be heard in London.  In Summer 2013, before the full formal season, the WNO Youth Opera will be doing Britten's Paul Bunyan. This isn't touring for obvious reasons.

Hans Werner Henze and Oliver Knussen - Undine

Oliver Knussen retrospective at the Barbican this weekend, but Hans Werner Henze's death last weekend still haunts me. Henze and Knussen have a lot more in common than one might assume. Both of them Wunderkind, with wide-sprawling careers. Henze was more prolific as a composer, Knussen  has been busy as conductor and general guru. Both of them connected to Aldeburgh. Henze, thinking Auden and Britten were still friends, naively sought Auden's patronage. It was good for Henze's art but not so good for his prospects with Britten. Henze's prospects on the big money US market were effectively doomed by his Communist ideals. Knussen';s career took off when he went to the US.

This week I've been listenin again to Knussen conduct Henze's ballet Undine (Ondine). Music for ballet  is different to music for theatre or for the concert hall. Music for ballet has to allow for the physical demands of dancers. Balletomanes come to see dancers : for them music is often secondary. So a composer must write bearing in mind the limitations of the human body. Dancers can't float up in the air indefinitely. There have to be breaks for them to rest and regroup.  Hence the episodic nature of ballet music, which has to allow for sequences that display the skills of the dancers. The episodes have to be long enough to give choreographers something to work with, yet not be too long or complex that dancers can't cope. Ballet music, one may say, follows the body not just the mind. 

 On audio such moments may drag but the drama is in the dancing itself.  Which is why seeing a ballet helps you connect between music and visuals. Henze was still only 30 in 1956 when Ondine was written, but he'd already written seven ballets : Ondine was the breakthrough that established him in the genre. The ballet was commissioned by Sir Frederick Ashton to showcase Margot Fonteyn.

Henze’s music thus focuses on images of water, tides and waves, for the sea is Ondine’s element. She’s supernatural, so her music is magically lyrical. When she dances in the waterfall, the colours in the orchestration shimmer around her. In comparison, scenes that take place on land, especially in Act 2, are relatively earthbound, but that’s the essence of the plot. Palemon dies, but Ondine lives on, immortal. The music flows so seamlessly into dance that you can almost see semi quavers enacted in movement. Every note reflects in dance. Pizzicato becomes en pointe, the interplay of piano, harp, and celeste become intricate ensemble. The guitar part is more than mere “Italianate colour”, for Henze loves the instrument and has written more for it than any modern composer. Seeing Ondine in performance shows just how good a composer Henze was and is. Sir Frederick Ashton and the audiences of 1958 found the music difficult, but Henze, a devoted balletomane, wrote intuitively for dance. Now the music poses no problems. Instead, we can appreciate how it respects the physical demands of ballet. Despite the undulating, wavering beauty of the scoring there are firm undercurrents and a strong dramatic pulse.

The water spirits form a circle, their arms undulating, like a giant sea anemone, moving with the ocean tides. Graceful as the image is, it’s also powerfully muscular, underlined by the depth and energy of the music. Sea anemones look delicate, but they’re strong, a lot like ballerinas. I learned Ondine from the audio recording conducted by Oliver Knussen. Now the image of the ondines in the corps de ballet will remain with me.

The sets were designed by Lila Di Nobili, who also designed the British premiere of Elegy for Young Lovers at Glyndebourne in 1961. Sir Frederick Ashton wanted to pay tribute to 19th century ballet tradition, so the set is lushly romantic, complete with proscenium arches, like a cherished museum piece. Against this background, the dancers seem all the more youthful and vibrant. I quite like the tension between Ashton's retro vision and Henze's irrepressible inventiveness.

Scandal! Henze Das Floß der Medusa

Hans Werner Henze on the scandal surrounding the first performance of Das Floß der Medusa (the Raft of the Medusa). In April, 1968, "Red" Rudi Dutschke, demonized student leader, survived an assassination attempt by a neo-Nazi. Henze helped Dutschke and sheltered him in his own home, attracting the kindly interest of the local police. That summer, Henze had written an article about the arts and revolution, in which he linked culture to social equality. "I most certainly did not mean international Stalinization or some such other horrific scenario". But in the paranoid atmosphere of the time, tempers ran high, and with that fear, denunciation  and self interest.  According to Henze, Luigi Nono and Peter Weiss had written letters in defence, but Theodor Adorno refused because he "could not consort with Communists". "Today", said Henze in his autobiography "we can see the cultural misunderstanding that obtained at the time for what it was - stupid and arrogant - but at that date...how difficult it was to explain....the wrongs that had built up over the years".

At a performance of his Second Piano Concerto on 29/9, Henze noticed that the orchestra refused to applaud. "It was because of my world revolution", he said he was told. Soon, there was a "media campaign" against him "by a "ghost writer also active as a composer" and a Hamburg journalist who attacked Henze "pillorying me and  the artistic ideas in the score of Das  Floß der Medusa, a work which, as yet unperformed, they could not possibly have known." During rehearsals, there were rumours of possible trouble. "Throughout this period, I felt as though I was cut off  from the rest of humanity and utterly on my own". 

He describes the night of the premiere : "There we were, waiting backstage - Charles Regnier (Charon),  Edda Moser (Madame la Mort), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (Jean-Charles),  and I, ready to go on, but no-one came to fetch us, ...through a chink in the wall, we could see that something was wrong in the hall. People were standing around. Had there been a problem with tickets?........ later we discovered that plain clothes detectives were in the audience, keeping an eye out for rebellious-looking types would that be my claque or my critics? Since no-one came to fetch us, the four of us decided to go out on the platform on our own. After all, the power of music, or at least the power of musicians  might have been sufficient to restore a semblance oforder, And so we set off, the soloists ahead of me, with the result that they were unaware of a man in a grey suit detaining me and saying that if I did not remnve the red flag  that was then being unfurled on stage, I would be held responsible for the consequences. .....In a flash, I realized that it was important for my whole future as an artist and as a member of civilized society, to react impeccably towards this obvious provocation.... I could also have said that I was there to conduct, not to keep the place clean..."

" I  mounted the podium and asked for silence  in the hall...... I raised my baton for the first entry. It was then that I heard a chorus of voices, at first pianissimo, then increasinglu audible. Where was it coming from? I could scarcely believe my ears, it was coming from the platform. The ladies and the gentlemen of the RIAS Chamber Choir that had come to Hamburg  from Berlin ...with whom I had often worked in the past  on terms of perfect amity were chanting in unison "Get rid of the flag!"...."

"A violent off-stage discussion now broke out. The chorus said that they could not bring themselves  to appear on stage with the red flag, the very flag that fluttered from the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. By now Fidi too was worked up  and announced that this was the last time he would allow himself to be led up the garden path by me. I was so shocked by his remark that I forgot to ask when the previous occasion had been. ...What garden path? But before I could  think of an answer, Frau Moser broke in and threw her arms around me explaining that whatever happened, she would always stick by me. All this happened in the green room within a matter of seconds, while outside in the hall riot police were starting to launch their attack. That they were already on the scene was due to the fact that they had been stationed in an adjoining room since before the start ofv the concert, ready for action with their clubs and shields and riot gear..... "

"But why, I wondered, had Mr Plod entered the fray? I returned to the platform to find that the orchestra had left... Finding a microphone, he tried  to protest the police intevention, but before he spoke a word, the mike was wrested away. "Meanwhile, at the entrance, representatives of different schools were laying into each other...There was total confusion, brute force was used, and a number of arrests were made. Ernest Schnabel may have been a former controller of North German Radio, but that did not stop him from being thrown through a plate glass door by a representative of the forces of law  and from being locked up in a cell for opposing the state's authority. He had tried to stop the fighting. The red flag was torn to shreds. One thing that I did not see that evening  and discovered only from a photograph  in the newspaper, was a further poster attached to the conductor's desk on which someone had daubed the word "Revolutionary" followed by a question mark. What was meant by this and what happened to the poster are questions I have never been able to answer".

".....I spent the evening with some acquaintances in Poseldorf....in the same street as the one in which some old friends  from the music world live. They were at home, I saw the lights on, and I knew that they knew where I was , but none of them made any effort to telephone or call around." 

The next day, the programme director of North German  radio apparently told a press conference that "for the next ten years, Henze would be dead as far as the German music scene was involved" and tried to charge Henze for damage to the hall. "At the time I thought the whole thing risible, and shameful, unnecessary, mismanaged  and mean. Time has done nothing to alter that position".

This incident is critical to an understanding of Henze's career. Whatever the details it's clear that Henze was also traumatized by a sense of personal betrayal. He was getting stick from all sides, Far Right, Far Left and points between.  Notice the poster with the question mark after the word "revolutionary". There's no evidence that Henze was complicit, and he emerged greatly damaged by the taint of scandal.  There's a brief hiatus in his output during 1969, which wasn't really broken until El Cimarrón (The Runaway Slave) and Henze's Sixth Symphony. In both cases he reaffirms his ideals and doesn't compromise for the sake of popularity.

 One can completely understand the actions of the Berlin RIA Choir, since their city was still brutally divided. For them, the traumas of the past were still open wounds.  But the sudden change in Henze's position is harder to explain. No-one could claim not to have known what Henze's politics were. Das Floß der Medusa is an explicit condemnation of the exploitation of the poor. It was even dedicated to Che Guevara. Perhaps people like revolution when it's sanitized and defanged, like wearing a Palestinan headscarf shows ones credentials without actually having to care about the issues. While Henze was being demonized,  Leonard Bernstein was admired for flaffing about with Black Panthers, who had no illusions about him.  Henze was lionized when he was fashionable and could guarantee those around him fame and fortune. But once he was demonized, the fashionable fled. That I find more shameful than those who objected to his politics.

Hans Werner Henze has died

Hans Werner Henze (1926-2012). Henze's death has just been announced by his publishers, Schott. Ironically, his Moralitäten is being performed tonight in Basel. No details yet, but Henze has been unwell for many years. Despite his suffering, Henze continued to write. If anything some of his later work is even more uncompromising. Henze would not "go gently into that good night". He believed in principles, even if they might not fit in with what others might expect. His music defies categories. It fits no easy pigeonholes. Henze was contradiction, personified.

Read the obit on Schott's website here.  (photo: Peter Andersen). One of the best pieces on Henze in the British media is here (Ivan Hewett). There is a lot on my site here on Henze.  Especially read  what I've written about Phaedra, which is much misunderstood by listeners expecting easy focus feelgood. Henze confronted death during its genesis and came up with a powerful statement on love and life. I attended the Berlin premiere but over the years,  I've grown to appreciate its profound depth even more.  The score is available bei Schott.  It's ironic that Henze should die just as we enter Benjamin Britten's centenary, for Henze was a Britten devotee, though never a part of Britten's inner circle. Henze's Phaedra and Britten's Phaedra are worth considering together, though they could never be performed together. Read what I've written on the subject HERE 

Also  read my piece on Henze's Six Songs from the Arabian, based on Ian Bostridge's searing performance at the Wigmore Hall this year (more mature and more intense than the recording). This is another seminally important work which anyone interested in Henze needs to know.

Also on this site, Henze's Voices , Der junge Lord,  and Elogium musicum, one of his last works.
Listening recommendations ? Obviously in the circumstances, the Requiem (superlative recording conducted by Ingo Metzmacher). But anyone who loves Henze would have many other favourites.  Later I'll listen to The Raft of the Medusa which started my Henze thing when i was a kid. Or the Ninth Symphony, or L'upupa.  I might however go into the garden because it's the first sunny day in weeks, and remember Henze in the Italian sunshine. But for starters, Henze's very early Whispers from heavenly death. 
 

Henze Six Songs from the Arabian, Bostridge, Wigmore Hall

Hans Werner Henze's Six Songs from the Arabian is a masterpiece,  perfectly tailored to Ian Bostridge for whom it was written. It captures the unique qualities of Bostridge's voice which so intrigued the composer, who could recognize originality when he heard it.  Thirteen years ago, Bostridge and Julius Drake premiered the cycle at the Wigmore Hall,  so it was fitting that it should feature as the finale of the current Wigmore Hall season.

Henze is a dramatist, and each of the Six Songs from the Arabian is a miniature drama. Selim the seafarer laughs as he sails into a storm. Drake makes the piano growl and rumble. This is a psychic storm, whipped up by supernatural beings. Henze quotes the witches' song from Goethe's Die erste Walpurgisnacht. It's a reference to Bostridge's doctorate in witchcraft studies, and to the undercurrent of cosmic chaos that runs through both Goethe and Henze. The piano part rumbles, then breaks into choppy ostinato. "Sieh, da flammt, da zieht das Böse!", Bostridge cries out of the silence, the key word "Böse" leaping out of the line like a whip of thunder. "Es pfeifen die Windsbräute, heulen und scrheiun" (Henze's text). Selim is shipwrecked. The storm is also a reference to Prospero and Caliban, to Bostridge (who was to create a magnificent Caliban in Thomas Adès The Tempest) and to Henze's interest in Britten, Britain and Shakespeare. Suddenly the storm stops and the true horror sinks in. "Selim, ach, Selim", growls Bostridge sotto voce, "was hast du gemacht"?

Similar multiple references in Die Gottesanbeterin.  Henze writes this as an arabesque, with exotic melismas that suggest Islamic prayer, for Selim needs divine help. Henze is also establishing an "oriental" otherness. The text describes a praying mantis. It's a reference to Alberto Giacometti's sculptures, to the insect with its hard exoskeleton, and to mating rituals that end in death.  Henze writes with symbolist intensity : the insect, for example looks powerful but is vulnerable within. "I am not praying" says the seductive female, "I seize my lover and subdue him at our wedding feast". Henze has said that Selim and Fatuma were real people he knew in Kenya. What must he have observed from their relationship?  Their lives were humble, but Henze gives them mythic status/ The song is not a poem but a monologue where phrasing is critically important. This is where Bostridge shows his virtuosity, his voice curling round words then spitting venomously as he describes the heterosexual act. There's little room for rest, since the lines twist and turn in one long sequence.

To emphasize the supernatural trauma, Henze does not follow normal syntax, stressing words for their musical quality. Hence stresses on words like "Baum" "das", "schreit", "auf" to throw the listener off track. Bostridge knows that the last thing Henze wants is for these songs to be delivered in a straightforward manner. I've heard this cycle done as "normal" song, which completely misses Henze's point.  The composer knew that Bostridge understood.  Ein Sonnenaufgang describes sunrise over a desert Neimansland where volcanos shoot lava (also a reference to the insect ritual) and jewel colours are bleached white by the overpowering heat of the day to come. Drake plays adamant, sharp chords. Bostridge's voice elides and twists round Henze's bizarre legato. Landscape painting this is not.

At this stage in the cycle, Henze introduces Fatuma, though one might say that she's present in the praying mantis and in the female witches in the storm that destroyed Selim's ship. Cäsarion is also a reference to Shakespeare, Ceasar and Cleopatra, and power struggles of war and love. Again, Henze plays on words like "Runen", "unendlichkeit" and "Sensucht", stretching the vowel sounds so the voice resembles the call of a muezzin, reaching out over vast open spaces. Henze also references the European tradition of a dance of death, in the wildly rhythmic piano part. As Drake beats out the ritual dance, Bostridge's voice sails forth in long, keening lines: the contrast reinforcing the spirtual struggle in the cycle.

"Weh!" cries Bostridge as the mood switches to Fatuma and her side of things.  She loved Selim, but he brutalized her and cast her our to die in a cave where the life giving sun cannot reach.  "Fatuma genannt, die schonste Fatuma in ganzen Land", Henze replicates Selim's cruelty, making Bostridge sing superhumanly extended lines. I once counted the number of ululating aaaaaaaaa beats in these lines, astounded by the vocal gymnastics Henze puts Bostridge through, knowing he can deliver. It's the cry of a wounded Fury, a wild animal making one last gasp. In Fatumas Klage, Henze connects to the women in Die ertse Walpurgisnacht, and to all victims of cruelty and injustice through history. One could possibly read a whole political analysis into this work. Bostridge wrote that witches were victims of conformist societies who were threatened by those who were different. Henze experienced a form of witch hunt himself. This work shows how Henze's socialist conscience remains undimmed.

What does this cycle mean, with its intense, elusive symbols? Henze concludes with a poem by Freidrich Rückert, just as he began by quoting Goethe. Das Paradies is a fairly undistinguished poem, where the phrase "reiche mir dein Hand" ends nearly every line. Henze turns this weakness into a strength. He makes the phrase into a natural chorus, repeating like the waves beating on the beach where Selim washed ashore. He writes the phrase so it recalls the long aaaaa's and ooooo's that have gone before, but not the deliberately disjointed synrtax. At last, the significance of the Imam prayers is revealed, in secular context. "Meiner Erden Reisen is bedroht vom Fiend, wehre seinem Hasse, reiche mir diene Hand". In his spiritual maelstorm, Selim beats up Fatuma. Perhaps Henze is suggesting that an alternative might be to reach out and touch in a non-violent, non-erotic way. The turbulence that went before gives way to relative simplicity.  It's a moving tribute to the value of friendship.

Since Bostridge and Drake first recorded Henze's Six Songs from the Arabian in 2001 (buy it here), Bostridge's voice has developed and life experience has added immense maturity to his interpretation. This performance was an astounding tour de force, infinitely deeper than before, the technical challenges overcome with ease. Henze was right. Bostridge can bring out the surreal, psychic intensity in the Six Songs like no-one else. This concert was recorded, though there's no mention of for whom. If there'll be a CD release, grab it and marvel.

Bostridge should also be praised for the brilliantly intelligent concert programme itself, the culmination of his Wigmore Hall series "Ancient and Modern".  In the first half, he combined John Cage's Seven Haiku for piano  with Schubert's Four Rückert Lieder in a new arrangement for piano, guitar and voice by Xuefei Yang, and Britten's Songs from the Chinese. John Cage believed in the role of random chance. Each of the three times Cage's Seven Haiku were repeated they took on the coloration of what they were heard after. Cage felt that what we process what we listen to based on our expectations and experience. Beautifully pristine playing by Julius Drake,

 Xuefei Yang's transcription of Schubert for guitar were good. Schubert loved the instrument dearly and wrote for it.. Henze is one of the greatest modern composers for guitar, as did Britten. Yang played her lithe transcription with sparkling grace, so one could hear the connection between guitar, pipa and erhu, a stringed instument that often seems to sing like voice. This was particularly apposite for the Britten Songs from the Chinese op 58, where Britten captures the spirit, though not the form, of Chinese music.The Songs from the Chinese were written after Britten's visit to the Far East but reflect his lifelong interest in non-western music.  These influences are obvious, and cannot be underestimated, though they're ignored by those who don't know their Britten. Please read my piece on The Prince of the Pagodas and on Mervyn Cooke here.

In The Old Lute, Britten evokes not a western lute but the sound of the Chinese pipa, which is quite different. Yang's delicate playing suggests that Britten knew exactly what a pipa should sound like. Those who haven't heard the pipa miss out on the subtlety of Britten's writing. Henze was greatly influenced by Britten, and understood the strangeness that lurks behind Britten's music which many performers miss, no matter how superficially correct their singing.  It's not for nothing that Henze fell in love with Bostridge's voice after hearing him sing Britten at Aldeburgh in 1996. Henze's extensive experience in writing for voice meant he could appreciate how unique Bostridge is, and inspired him to write music no-one else can do justice to.

There'll be another review of this concert by Claire Seymour in Opera Today.Please explore this site, more on Britten, Henze, Bostridge, Schubert and Lieder than any other

Hans Werner Henze, Birthday Boy

Hans Werner Henze turns 85 today. One of the great eminences of modern music, all the greater because he refused to compromise his principles to chase popular success. He's extremely prolific, and still working, and his music covers a wide range of styles and genres. Over 400 pieces and still continuing.

Until the debacle of 1968, he was opera's greatest hope, creating operas that were accessible but also good, innovative music. Yet success didn't blind him to the world outside privileged opera circles. He became a communist, went to live in Cuba with Castro, and set up a community in the Italian countryside. Red flags to the bull of the Right: Henze was banned from the US by the FBI (who were also tailing Benjamin Britten). Yet Henze wasn't accepted by the Left, either, as he wasn't radical enough and lived a champagne lifestyle at home.

Contradictions. Son of a brutish Nazi father he came out gay and liberal, long before it was "safe" to do so. His outlook is German but he was so p'd off by the Adenauer scene that he moved to Italy in the 1950's. He's uncompromisingly modern, but accessible and direct.  He scraps with composers like Lachenmann who can't fault Henze's experience and genuine musical instincts.

Henze's music is a microcosm of the last 60 years. Discovering modern music and jazz after growing up under the Nazis, he was open to all influences and found his own distinctive way. He used to hang out at Aldeburgh though by that stage his friendship with W H Auden didn't win him points with Britten. Some of the later work, such as Phaedra, is so deep and uncompromising that it won't be appreciated until Henze's role in modern music is properly understood. The media, and audiences who follow the media, don't know whatb they're missing. Please delve this site for lots more on Henze, and Phaedra in particular. If I ever get time I'll wrtite about some other Henze key works, like Seven Songs From the Arabian, and the 9th Symphony, even some of the music for film. Read Henze's biography, (the Wiki article is pretty infantile) but above all, listen to the music. Photo is by Hans Peter, courtesy Schott Music, on whose site you can hear sound samples.

Henze's Phaedra in Philadelphia

Hans Werner Henze's Phaedra makes it to the US, where he was banned in the 60's for his left wing ideas. As far as Henze was concerned, he didn't care. In 1968 he was so traumatized by an event still shrouded in mystery today, that he was unable to compose for a long time. Henze's intergrity has been vindicated.  After his break, his music returned with new vigour. Phaedra, coming decades later, after another period of trauma, is a declaration of what henze stands for and believes in most deeply.

Here is a link to a review of Henze's Phaedra in a new production by the Opera Company of Philadelphia. It "may well be the most important and ambitious new work presented by any American company this season". Here's the review from the Wall Street Journal.  Most perceptive of all, though is David Patrick Steanes in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Too often, reviewers assume it's the work, not themselves, that fails if they don't get all of it at once. Steanes knows that Phaedra isn't an opera that can easily be fully taken in on one hearing, and without background.

Henze is a very prolific composer, but even among his many excellent works, Phaedra is a masterpiece.  It's intensely powerful and passsionate - a protest against dishonesty, domesticity and death. Indeed, it's hard to take in completely on a single hearing, especially as Henze's embedded many references to other works, his own and those of composers he's admired, like Benjamin Britten. Please see my article on the similarities between Britten's Phaedra and Henze's Phaedra and the critical, very deliberate differences. Phaedra is like a statement of Henze's entire life philosophy. Integrity, restated with passion at a critical time in his life. It's an amazing work, that I think grows with time and experience.

The Philadelphia production seems quite straightforward, which is fine. The Berlin production, which I attended, was astounding, staging and music working together perfectly. Incredibly perceptive and imaginative, like the opera itself. If I hadn't seen the Berlin staging with its magical refracted mirrors reflecting the orchestra and the singers so the lines between reality and image kept switching – reflection, refraction,  illusion, just like the ideas in the music – I don't think I'd have got into the opera so quickly. It was the premiere after all, no-one had any idea what to expect. It was one of the great experiences of my life. With all respect to Philadelphia, it's unlikely that it was as white-hot as the Berlin cast and orchestra. Again, not a problem, as iut's a start. "You ain't seen nothing yet" as the song goes.

Read about the Berlin premiere  HERE. How lucky I was to catch the same cast and orchestra in the concert performance at the Barbican a while later. Read HERE. Second time round, the impact was even more profound. Henze's Phaedra is so deep that the more you get into it, the more wonders it reveals. So here is a really useful link to Chester Novello, the publishers, from whom you can get the score. Good synopsis.

The Prince of Homburg Kleist Henze

A new production of The Prince of Homburg by Heinrich von Kleist opened yesterday at The Donmar in London.  The Prince of Homburg is a psychodrama, but completed in 1810, long  before the language of dreams had a vocabulary. It deals with moral issues like honour, duty, betrayal and the very idea of goodness in a mad world.

It's 1675, and North Germany has been invaded by Sweden. On the battlefield at Fehrbellin, it seems at first that the Grand Elector of Brandenburg has been killed, riding heroically into the heart of the battle. Inspired by this image, the young Prince of Homburg seizes the initiative which decisively changes near defeat into decisive victory.  As in battle, in life, sudden cataclysmic changes. Because he disobeyed orders to stay put, the Prince is court-martialled and sentenced to death. The play is about how he deals with the crazy situation he's in.

The Prince of Homburg is a fascinating story which operates on many different levels. It's been produced many times, in many countries, and is the subject of several movies. I vaguely remember an earlyish German black and white movie, but not much else about it. The best and most readily available film is Marco Bellochio's ll principe di Homburg. (1997) Although it's in Italian, it's very atmospheric, tautly directed and acted, so it feels like you're trapped in the Brandenburg marches, in savage wartime conditions. War is irrational, which is why the Elector is so harsh on the young prince.

Hans Werner Henze's opera Der Prinz von Homburg (1960) has been performed many times, though there is only one full recording, the DVD of the .Bayerische Staatsoper production of 1994. Wolfgang Sawallisch conducts, and the French baritone Francois Le Roux sings the Prince. Musically it's OK, though one could imagine something more intense and gritty. Henze cloaks his dramas in beguiling elegance, but at heart they're startlingly sharp. Nikolas Lenhoff directs, with designs by Gottfried Pilz. Achingly brightly lit, which is perhaps not a bad idea, given that the Prince is "under interrogation" but there's more to than Andy Warhol outlines. I  prefer the shadows of the Bellochio film, where you can feel the poison seeping, ,like miasma rising from the marsh.

In 2009, there was another major new production of Henze's Der Prinz von Homburg, at the Theatre an der Wien in Vienna, which specializes in intelligent and musically-informed. Marc Albrecht conducted the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and singers included Christian Gerhaher as the Prince, Britta Stallmeister as Nathalie, to whom Henze and Ingeborg Bachmann, his librettist, gave a much bigger part than von Kleist did.

Hard to judge by photos alone, but it looks as good as the cast. Larry Lash in Opera News says "Christof Loy conjures a dream world, a telescoping wooden box that goes from charcoal gray to infinite pitch-black designed by Dirk Becker. The opera begins in white period costumes by Herbert Murauer, with the singers' faces powdered, but it gradually moves to late 1950s street clothes. Bernd Purkrabek's lighting is miraculous: by framing the proscenium with strips of bright white light, he makes it possible to change the entire stage picture in a matter of seconds. Loy takes a pessimistic view of the denouement: the Prince chases everyone offstage and, as in one of his premonitions, plummets into his grave in a startling coup de théâtre."

Another description, in German Der Blick ins Grab der Erkenntnis (a Glimpse into the Grave of Knowing by Roberto Becker. More photos by Wilfried Hösl on this link - I've borrowed one under "fair use" conditions.

And the Donmar production, using an English adaptation? Strictly speaking I cannot say, because I was in a seat without any legroom and was forced to leave in the interval. Don't Health and Safety Regulations apply? I can't have been the first to suffer and won't be the last. The Donmar really should take this more seriously.  Nonetheless, it was a decent production even if it didn't reach the many deeper levels in the drama. Updating to Jane Austen times prettified what isn't a pretty drama. Uniforms don't necessarily depict war : the war in the Prince's mind goes deeper.

Maybe it's just as well I didn't stay. They changed the ending ! Guardian theatre critics at least, seem on the ball, read Michael Billington. He realizes that Kleist wasn't writing TV costume drama.


Interesting biographical note on Heinrich von Kleist (from Joachim Maass, trans 1983)  Kleist was a blackish sheep from a noble clan, one of whom was Fieldmarshal Ewald von Kleist (1881-1954) who must have known similar dilemmas of duty given who his Leader of Staff was. The von Kleists weren't too happy about Heinrich's death site on the Wannsee becoming a tourist spot.

Henze - Elegy for Young Lovers ENO Young Vic

Catch Hans Werner Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers at the ENO Young Vic. In German-speaking countries it's almost part of the standard repertoire because it's brilliant, one of Henze's greatest operas.  It's rarely performed in England, which is ironic because it was written in English, to a libretto by W H Auden and Chester Kallman. What's more, Benjamin Britten haunts the opera as an unseen presence. Elegy For Young Lovers could in many ways be the greatest British opera Britten didn't write.

Elegy for Young Lovers  is about a poet, Gregor Mittenhofer, who can't write. He's an emotional vampire, stealing his ideas from other people, whom he ruthlessly discards when they're no longer useful.  He's enormously successful, courted by the powerful,  cosseted by a band of sycophants who pander to his whims. He's ruthless, prepared to send his lover to her death when she's no longer useful to him.  W H Auden never had much respect for Britten, so Britten's success must have been galling. Along comes Henze, already making huge waves in the opera world.  Mittenhofer is Auden's attack on Britten, where it hurts. Henze, though, stands up for Britten by embedding references to Britten's non-Auden music into his own.

In any case,  as Henze knew full well, the world is full of crooks who get ahead by manipulating others. Hitler, for example, who could fit the Mittenhofer bill many times better than Britten might. The mountain inn, with its viewing terrace, is as remote from reality as Berchtesgaden. Or Valhalla. Or Blair and Mandelson. Or any talentless nonentity surrounded  by an adoring coterie.

So Elegy for Young Lovers may have been written by Henze, a German, but it's about Britten and Britain and deserves far more British interest than it gets. For one thing, orchestrally, it's extremely sophisticated. The surface lyricism is eroded by twisted melodies, angularities that erode sentimentality before it has a chance to take root. It's like Mittenhofer himself, who seems so smooth and urbane, but is poison.  Henze writes stirring crescendos, but is most telling in quiet moments. When Mittenhofer speaks, horns wail sour notes : "This man is the Devil"

Stefan Blunier conducts.  He's unknown in Britain, but his pedigree is very good - see his website. He currently conducts at the Komische Oper, Berlin, specializing in interesting repertoire. The orchestra was tucked away in a loft above the stage at the Young Vic, Luckily for me, I was sitting where I could watch Blunier close-up.He's expressive without being ostentatious. He clearly has personality, getting such good rapport with the ENO Orchestra that they play Henze's quirky idiom like it comes naturally. The "blizzard music" in Act 3 was extremely well realized, though, unfortunately, the staging detracted.

Having learned Elegy for Young Lovers  from the famous recording with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, it was more difficult to adjust to Steven Page's Mittenhofer.  DFD doesn't do slithering, slimy and sibilant too well, but his voice is just so much richer and deeper that Page doesn't stand a chance in comparison. Nonetheless, he looks the part . Had the staging been more in keeping with the opera, Page would have had more scope to show what he can do.

Jennifer Rhys-Davies was superb as Hilde Mack, the woman who sees visions which Mittenhofer turns into poetry.  This is a wonderful part, with some of Henze's wittiest writing. At first, Hilde's deluded,  so the part is parody "mad scene". Later when she rejects Mittenhofer's scams, Hilde becomes Brünnhilde. But Henze (who at this stage in his life mocked Wagner) emphasizes the transformation by giving her manicly exaggerated coloratura, which Rhys-Davies executes with feisty humour. .

Kate Valentine sings Elizabeth Zimmer, Mittenhofer's young lover. She's statuesque, an advantage in this production where she's not called upon to develop the role much past ingénue. Together with Robert Murray's Toni Reischmann, however, she comes into her own., because Murray defines his own part so well. This Toni is an honest, solid soul, the complete opposite of Mittenhofer. Murray may not have movie-star glamour (nor Mittenhofer's wealth) but you can see why a girl in that position would be charmed.  In the final duet, Murray's voice warms, sparking Valentine into similar lyricism. They're freezing to death, but their music cocoons them in their final illusion.

Mittenhofers can't survive without flunkies, so Lucy Schaufer, as Lina, Mittenhofer's gofer, has almost a  bigger part than he has. Without her, and those like her, men like him would never survive.  Again, Schaufer's full potential wasn't served by this staging.  The character is an aristocrat, yet she humiliates herself and becomes an accomplice to murder. In Germany, where the Hitler aspects of Mittenhofer would be more obvious, Lina's role could be expanded in a very pointed way. Crawlers crawl bec uasee they can share in the Nutcase's reflected glory./ It's in their interest to keep the tyrant going. Here though, Schaufer wasn't called upon to give her best. Similarly, William Robert Allenby as Dr Reischmann (Toni's Dad) and Stephen Kennedy as Josef Mauer, the general factotum, are capable of more.

Wonderful opera, superlative orchestral playing, good singing: all add up to an excellent evening, which should not be missed.  Where the experience fell short was the direction, by Fiona Shaw. There were a great many good moments in this staging, but the problem was that there were too many moments, one after another, without any real focus.  So many details compete for attention that the overall impact is overload. Some details are of primary importance, some secondary, some tertiary, but when they'll all piled up they wipe each other out.

The ever-widening crack in the floor, for example, would be powerfully dramatic, but it's lost among the debris of bear suits, projections on tables, flickering lights, period what-nots and busywork. Some serve a purpose, some confuse. So Mittenhofer plays with teddy bears? Sure, Lina nannies him, but he's manipulating a weakness in  her. He lets her infantilize him, but it doesn't follow that he's infantile, far from it. Similarly, why the holy water stoup? Of course there's something unholy in this place but it's not developed enough to make it worth pursuing. Similarly, the video projections were good, but with so many different things happening at the time time they didn't get their due.

Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers deserves to be a big hit because it's a fantastic opera and as such will always succeed.  There is  a great deal more to this opera than this diffuse, superficial staging suggests. It's certainly more than gimmicky camp. But for the time being, paring it down might be more effective.  Perhaps when this production is revived, as it should be, it shpul;d be extensively revised so the focus can be sharpened. and made more acute. One thing will have to be faced. Auden may have said the plot was about Yeats, but that it is about Yeats. Britten was alive and powerful. Auden was being arch, because he was not stupid. A bit of background knowledge, about the opera, the composer, the background and the music would have gone a long way in this case.. Luckily, most ijn the aiudience do not know Henze or his music, so director opera in this situation isn't an issue. It's not a good idea to base a production around Yeats and the "Irish" connection because it's a red herring. Basing a production around Yeats and the "Irish" factor delimits the opera, it's not a good idea.


Speaking of tightening focus, I'll be revising this too. New Improved version to come in next few days Please seee other posts on Henze on this site (lots!, including  Henze's Phaedra and Britten's Phaedra)