Second World Premiere of the Sonata for Viola and Piano (1946)

On the other hand, the sonata is completely unknown: No catalogue raisonné includes it in its lists, no biographer mentions it, not even Henze - he had forgotten it. It was only played once, when Henze accompanied the Darmstadt violist Willi Horn in a studio concert on 29 September 1946 as part of the first summer courses for new music. After that, the manuscripts - a score and the viola part - remained with Horn and only recently ended up in the Paul Sacher Foundation. The piece thus received its second premiere on 4 May 2021.

When Henze composed the sonata in March 1946, he was 19 years old and had completed military service and had been a prisoner of war. Although he had studied music theory and percussion at the State Music School in Braunschweig for a few months in 1942-43, his actual training period was still ahead of him at the time. In June 1946, he began studying composition with Wolfgang Fortner in Heidelberg. The composition thus falls into the phase of reorientation after 1945, when the young generation of composers in Germany began to discover for themselves what had previously been ostracised and repressed. The greatest influence in the early years was exerted by neoclassicism and, above all, the work of Hindemith. Henze's sonata clearly reflects this orientation, from the general gesture and character of the music, as reflected in the movement designations, to the structure of the work, for example in the motoric continuity of movement or in expansive melodies and ostinato accompaniment figures. However, it would be a mistake to characterise the piece as epigonal for this reason, as it is much more a testimony to a new departure that is not about being ‘individual’, but about opening up new terrain.