Henze: Being Beauteous & Kammermusik 1958

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Prohaska’s view of Arthur Rimbaud’s prose poem is altogether cooler, more ethereal and reservedly sensual than Moser’s, taking seriously the snowy setting of the Beauteous Being’s violent metamorphosis.... — Gramophone Magazine, September 2016 More…

Release Date: 27th May 2016
Catalogue No: WER73342
Label: Wergo
Length: 63 minutes

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Henze, H: Being Beauteous

Work length15:08

Album only

Anna Prohaska, Sophia Whitson, Andreas Grünkorn, Fabian Diederichs, Katharina Kühl, Valentin Priebus
NDR Sinfonieorchester
Peter Ruzicka

Henze, H: Kammermusik 1958

Work length37:12

$11.00

$15.40

Peter Gijsbertsen, Jürgen Ruck
NDR Sinfonieorchester
Peter Ruzicka

I. Prefazione

Track length4:05

$1.00

$1.40

II. In lieblicher Blaeue

Track length4:03

$1.00

$1.40

III. Tento 1 "Du schönes Bächlein"

Track length2:02

$1.00

$1.40

IV. Innen aus Verschiedenem entsteht

Track length3:51

$1.00

$1.40

V. Tento 2 "Es findet das Aug' oft"

Track length1:35

$1.00

$1.40

VI. Gibt es auf Erden ein Maß?

Track length6:43

$1.00

$1.40

VII. Sonata

Track length3:34

$1.00

$1.40

VIII. Möcht ich ein Komet sein?

Track length3:17

$1.00

$1.40

IX. Cadenza

Track length2:53

$1.00

$1.40

X. Wenn einer in den Spiegel siehet

Track length2:53

$1.00

$1.40

XI. Tento 3 "Sohn Laios"

Track length2:16

$1.00

$1.40

Henze, H: Kammermusik 1958. Wie Baeche reisset das Ende von etwas mich dahin

Work length4:47

$1.00

$1.40

Peter Gijsbertsen, Jürgen Ruck
NDR Sinfonieorchester
Peter Ruzicka

Henze, H: Kammermusik 1958: XIII. Adagio (Epilogo)

Work length6:39

$1.00

$1.40

Peter Gijsbertsen, Jürgen Ruck
NDR Sinfonieorchester
Peter Ruzicka

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About

Hans Werner Henze, whose childhood and youth were darkened by his experiences of Nazism and war, became something of a legend during his own lifetime. Yet at the beginning of his career, he was considered an outsider in West German musical circles, although (or perhaps because?) he quickly became one of the most frequently performed contemporary composers. He was shunned by the musical avant-garde and was considered a “traitor”, an “absolutely senseless” accusation in his eyes. Henze seemed to follow an unwavering inner drive for compositional individuality.

Henze composed the cantata Being Beauteous, based on the prose poem of the same name by Arthur Rimbaud, in 1963, soon after returning from his first trip to the USA. In Manhattan and Harlem, the composer experienced contrasts of wealth and poverty. Henze felt that his experiences in New York – the danger to life and the challenge to the classical ideal of beauty posed by the conflict between abundance and decay – had been anticipated in Rimbaud’s poem, which comes from the cycle Les Illuminations. “In this composition of mine, the poetry is treated as though each of its thoughts were a small aria in itself. These arias are framed by short violoncello quartets into which the harp is entwined. Whereas each aria has an autonomous form, the instrumental quintet sections are interrelated - they are variations of one another.” (Henze)

Henze was inspired by a number of experiences to write Kammermusik 1958 - über die Hymne “In lieblicher Bläue” von Friedrich Hölderlin. He made numerous sketches during a trip to Greece in the summer of 1958, a time when his affinity for the Mediterranean landscape and culture merged with Hölderlin’s idealization of classical antiquity. In Henze’s words, “Everything was as though myths had been born only yesterday. The stones began to sing.” The recording of Kammermusik 1958 is the first recording of the string orchestra version.

Reviews

September 2016

Prohaska’s view of Arthur Rimbaud’s prose poem is altogether cooler, more ethereal and reservedly sensual than Moser’s, taking seriously the snowy setting of the Beauteous Being’s violent metamorphosis. The result is enrapturing, otherworldly, her clean tone serene and her diction superb

23rd June 2016

two of Hans Werner Henze’s most rapturously lyrical works...Prohaska captures [Being Beauteous's] strange, fragile, ecstatic quality perfectly...Kammermusik is a much more substantial work...more musically intricate and perhaps less overtly expressive, too, but it’s one of Henze’s finest, most personal achievements, and superbly played and sung.

Henze: Being Beauteous & Kammermusik 1958

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