Composer of our Time
The planned events in September may go ahead, but with an enormously reduced audience.
On 3 September, the exhibition Gütersloh's Forgotten Son. The cosmopolitan Hans Werner Henze opens with the piece Carillon, Récitativ, Masque and video projections from the exhibition which was supported by numerous items from the Hans Werner Henze Foundation. Afterwards people are allowed to enter the city museum in small groups to see the exhibition in the original.
The renaming of the former theatre square as Hans Werner Henze Square also begins in the theatre with choral music from the children's opera Pollicino. Then we step out onto the square, where Lord Mayor Henning Schulz will baptise the square with a moving speech and a ceremonial unveiling.
The square, which is lined by the theatre and the city hall, is appropriate for its namesake, and it is the first place where Hans Werner Henze is being honoured.
From 26-28 October, the exhibition Canti di Colore (first shown in the Cantiere of Montepulciano in 2017) is being set up in the city theatre, but on the afternoon of 28 October, the opening day, the head of the culture department receives a telephone message that the opening, together with the accompanying concert, may not take place in front of an audience. So in the early evening we are among ourselves - the Lord Mayor, the head of the Department of Culture, the theatre management, some journalists, the representative of the Hans Werner Henze Foundation and the representatives of the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe, who are awarding the Hans Werner Henze Prize to the composer Robin Hoffman that evening.
