Two last movements by Hans Abrahamsen

Hans Werner Henze had been friends with the Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen since 1980, when he heard Abrahamsen's early piece Winternacht (Winter Night) at the Copenhagen Conservatory, a chamber music work that traces the seasons, starting with winter and working backwards through autumn and summer to spring.

Two years later, when Hernze conducted one of his regular concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic, he included two pieces by Abrahamsen, Stratifications and Nacht und Trompeten in the programme, the latter as a world premiere, so much did he appreciate the younger colleague's work. Needless to say, Abrahamsen was then obliged to make his contribution to the series "Modern Composers Write for Children" when Henze launched the Deutschlandsberg Youth Music Festival in Styria, initiating the creation of more than 60 new works for music school children.

At the beginning of the 2000s, an early work by Hans Werner Henze that was thought to have been lost resurfaced, a sonatina from 1947, -which was now given the title Sonatina 1947 and was premiered by Christopher Tainton at the Salzburg Festival in 2003.

Hans Abrahamsen was so moved by Henze's Jugendwerk (as Henze had been by Abrahamsen's Jugendwerk 20 years earlier) that he asked the Hans Werner Henze Foundation for permission to elaborate the last two movements for orchestra. In view of their long-standing friendship and mutual artistic esteem, nothing stood in the way, and this work, entitled Two Last Movements of Sonatina 1947, finally received its acclaimed premiere on 5 December 2019 as a commission from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Franz Welser-Möst conducted and Alexandre Tharaud played the piano.