Birthday Concert for Maestro Henze

Birthday Concert for Maestro Henze

by Christa Blenk

Michael Kerstan - together with the mayor - organised an extraordinary birthday concert in Ariccia for the great maestro Hans Werner Henze.
 
Ariccia is a very old town 26 kilometres south-east of Rome in the Castelli Romani region. Ariccia is also situated on Lake Nemi and exactly on the other side, where the goddess Diana used to hunt and where her sanctuary stands, is the town of Marino (incidentally, the second part of Henze's opera Phaedra is also set here). Henze lived in Marino for over 50 years and it was there, in the Villa Leprara, that the Hans Werner Henze Foundation was established after his death.

Yesterday evening, the Daegu MBC Symphony Orchestra, members of the Phorminx Ensemble Darmstadt, conductor Kushtrim Gashi, Michael Kerstan, Managing Director and Artistic Advisor of the Hans Werner Henze Foundation (he also organised the concert) and four composers met there to give the maestro, who died in 2012, a magnificent, surprising and very special birthday concert. Hans Werner Henze would have turned 89 on 1 July!

Seven new compositions by seven composers, four of whom were also present last night, were performed.

Volker Blumenthaler (*1951) took part in the Cantiere Internazionale d'arte organised by Hans Werner Henze in Montepulciano in 1977 and 1982. His short composition early colours in memorium Hans Werner Henze was composed in 2015. He sends his music from the foggy dawn anxiously through the forest towards the light and the sunrise colours. The necessary chromaticism came from a sensitive solo clarinet. We hear violin birds, perhaps even the hoopoe, Henze's favourite bird, to which he even dedicated an opera!

The second piece In the Moment (before the tears flow) for solo cello (Wolfgang Lessing) and ensemble was also composed for this concert in 2015 by the young Korean composer Sungmi Parks, who was present at the concert. A sad, sometimes weeping composition that gains more and more strength through rhythm and dynamics and thus overcomes sadness. Harmonious flute and clarinet finale.

The South Korean Kyu-Yung Chin composed the third work. From the Orient for alto flute and string orchestra transports us to the centre of a snake incantation. The repeated gong tones paralyse the snake for a few seconds until it starts moving again. Kyu-Yung Chin studied in Karlsruhe. Angelika Bender is a wonderful flautist who has been playing with the Phorminx Ensemble for almost 20 years.

The Dutchman Cord Meijering, who wrote the following piece, is a co-founder of the Phorminx Ensemble and now lives in Darmstadt. He also established the connection to the Korean orchestra. He studied with Hans Werner Henze at the Cologne University of Music from 1983 to 1986 and dedicated the work "New Songs from Italy and Germany" to the maestro on his 80th birthday in 2006. Tombeau de Hans Werner Henze per violoncello e 13 strumenti, was also composed in 2015. After the concert, Meijering told the audience that he was thinking of a composition by the French composer Gaultier, who also dedicated a composition to his teacher Mézangeau (Le tombeau de Mézangeau), inspired by it. It is funeral music, lyrical and almost post-romantic, describing the pain of his maestro's death. The trumpet begins with a flourish until a kind of funeral march begins, although it is not a march. One briefly thinks of a state funeral, or at least the funeral of a great man, Schubertian homages and symphonic approaches are ended with an exhaling sigh - the musicians lower their heads and a minute of mourning follows. A very successful composition, very much in the spirit of Henze, who would certainly have been very proud of his pupil.

Myung-Whun Choi's composition was also written in 2015 in honour of the master. Mo-rahms II for clarinet and ensemble is a wink at the abrupt meeting of two cultures, a search for the self. Myung-Whun Choi studied in Germany and the clarinet in this delicious work constantly quotes Mozart and Brahms. Thomas Löffler also really enjoyed it - and so did we!

As there was no programme booklet, Michael Kerstan always announced each piece beforehand and told us a little about the composer. That was very pleasant and cleared the air for the following piece. Next up was the maestro himself.

Hans Werner Henze's Fantasia for Strings was composed in 1966; Schlöndorff asked Henze to compose the music for his first film after Musil's "Törless". Henze was at the age of about 40 and was in an incredibly productive phase, having decided to concentrate solely on composing. His young partner Fausto Moroni took care of the house construction in Marino, which had been repeatedly interrupted since 1963. By Christmas of the same year, however, they were able to celebrate together with Ingeborg Bachmann in La Leprara - with a chimney that no longer smoked (as Henze himself wrote in the Reisebilder and Böhmische Quinten).

The Törless string suite was the perfect complement and at the same time emphasised this great composer. Henze used Renaissance instruments to describe the complicated, decadent and morbid inner life of the student Törless. Elegant, late-romantic and energetic. Wonderfully presented by 9 string players of the Daegu MBC Orchestra under the conductor from Kosovo, Kushtrum Gashi.

Sung-Ho Hwang concluded the programme with Cliché (2015). It is a dialogue between clarinet and flute, a constant back and forth and not wanting to decide. The nagging clarinet responds to the rather compromising flute, fast and lively, lively and with many classical references. Very difficult to play, the flautist told us later. The ensemble Phorminx was founded in 1993 by musicians and composers in Darmstadt and the three soloists, Thomas Löffler (clarinet), Angelika Bender (flute) and Wolfgang Lessing (cello), have been with the group almost since its foundation and have studied together.

All the works had one thing in common: they were written in the spirit of Henze and were characterised by an unmistakable courage to be lyrical! These compositions were premièred a few days ago in Darmstadt and in Daegue.

" I would like my music to have the same effect in the future (i.e. after my death) as it does today and that it can continue to speak to an audience that is familiar with the cultural and social concerns of the time ....." (Hans Werner Henze)

This was exactly the case last night in Ariccia.

On Friday, they will all be travelling to Germany to repeat this extraordinary concert in Nuremberg on Saturday.