Thomas Mann would have been envious of the views

Only last year, an interested party dropped out "at the last minute", reports Kerstan. Prior to that, contact had also been made with German politicians, such as the Federal Office for the Arts and Media (BKM) and the Foreign Ministry - so far without success. In the quite comparable case of Thomas Mann's villa in California, things were quite different: almost three years ago, the German federal government bought the writer's villa to avert a sale and the threat of demolition.

In the meantime, the Mann villa in Pacific Palisades has become a meeting place. Henze had exactly that in mind for his estate in Marino. He wanted his beloved retreat to become a kind of second Villa Massimo - a meeting place for young composers, a place and workshop of music modelled on the famous German Cultural Academy in Rome. According to Kerstan, contact was also made with the Villa Massimo - also without success. In Henze's case, politics is obviously finding it difficult, although he held a central position in post-war musical and cultural life.

"In Germany, there seems to be little understanding of who Henze was and what his status was," Kerstan concludes, looking rather disillusioned. Yet the Foundation can point to considerable successes when it comes to managing Henze's oeuvre. In any case, an average of about 150 performances of Henze's instrumental works are given each year. The main focus is on larger-ensemble genres such as the symphonies, but there is still a lot of catching up to do in chamber music.

In addition, the posthumous premiere of Henze's Opus 1, concert music for solo violin and chamber orchestra, is scheduled for the next Easter Festival in Salzburg. The widow of Kurt Stier, a former concertmaster of the Bavarian State Orchestra in Munich, had given the manuscript to the Foundation in September 2017. In the same context, an arrangement of the chamber opera "La piccola Cubana" for chamber ensemble will also be premiered in Salzburg in 2020 - a project Henze had developed with Hans Magnus Enzensberger.
     As a rule, about three new productions of Henze operas are staged worldwide each season, which is also an astonishing result. Most recently, two operas based on libretti by the writer Ingeborg Bachmann premiered, namely "Der Prinz von Homburg" after Heinrich von Kleist at the Stuttgart State Opera and "Der junge Lord" at the Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich. These works show Henze to be a clear-sighted social critic who has lost none of his contemporary relevance.

While the "Prince of Homburg" deals with the contradiction between reasons of state and humanity, the "Young Lord" demonstrates the xenophobia. One may argue about the rather harmless productions by Stephan Kimmig in Stuttgart and Brigitte Fassbaender. But on a musical level, there are powerful discourses here. Especially the intensity of Robin Adams in the title role of the Prince remains in the memory. And Anthony Bramall, with the Munich Gärtnerplatz Orchestra, succeeds precisely in what Cornelius Meister, conducting the Stuttgart State Orchestra, could not - an exemplary balance between gripping, even caricaturing sharpness and the sensuality of sound so typical of Henze. After all, the new Stuttgart production was recorded, which will undoubtedly help to disseminate Henze's work.

What remains is the urgent question of the future of the composer's estate in Marino. There are so many interesting models for this. For example, the Munich Biennale for New Music Theatre or the Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte in Montepulciano - both festivals once founded by Henze - could be integrated.

One thing is certain: The estate in Marino is still in its original condition - unlike the Mann Villa in California or the mostly reconstructed composers' houses of Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Schumann. If no solution is found, a cultural monument of the first order is threatened with decay. A bitter loss for the music world, but a veritable embarrassment for the supposed cultural nation of Germany.