This attractive compilation fills significant gaps in the current discography of Henze's earlier compositions.
The main work, Nachtstücke und Arien, dates from 1957, and mortally offended avantgarde puritans at its premiere by its revival of fullblooded lyricism, less than 10 years after Strauss's Vocal Henze 576 Four Last Songs was supposed to have said a final farewell to such self-indulgence. This sumptuous, at times explosively dramatic music, comes across well in this performance. Michaela Kaune sings with poise and, where necessary, an apt operatic flair. The recorded sound throughout is adequate, though not especially well defined.
Like the other works on the disc, Nachtstückeund Arien owes far more to the post-Romantic espressivo of Berg and Schoenberg than it does to Strauss. It's most directly indebted to Henze's own opera König Hirsch, the major work of the 1950s in which he gave his newfound love of melody the fullest rein. With Laselva incantata (The enchanted forest, 1991) we find Henze revisiting König Hirsch and recasting some of its most characterful music in purely orchestral form. Three Symphonic Studies and Four Poems for orchestra were both written in the 1950s, and although less fully rounded than Nachtstücke und Arien, they all have Henze's typical blend of turbulent emotionalism and spacious, questing lyricism. In the relatively extended first Study the risk of aimless drifting isn't altogether avoided. But this lapse is corrected with interest in the shorter, more tightly controlled Poems. The romantic resonances confirm how fruitful the experience of composing for the theatre, and engaging with earlier German traditions, had become for Henze. Those resonances continue in most of his finest later works, but the idiomatic performances on this disc let you hear some of their earliest manifestations.