In February 2005, the Spanish National Orchestra and National Choir (OCNE) dedicated their annual festival "Carta Blanca" to Hans Werner Henze.

From 19 to 28 October 2001, nine important music promoters in Nuremberg organised a collective festival to celebrate the 75th birthday of Hans Werner Henze.

On 26 October 2000, the annual award ceremony for the Praemium Imperiale, the Nobel Prize for the Arts, took place in Tokyo.

The composer Hans Werner Henze appreciates the good tone also in fashion

Guiding thoughts for the Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte Montepulciano from 1989, published in the program book of the Cantiere 2022.
The composer wrote this text to highlight the uniqueness of the Cantiere and to ensure its economic survival in the long term.

With the founding of the Munich Biennale, the City of Munich commissioned five to six compositions every other year. Hans Werner Henze succeeded in bringing the premieres of new music theatre works to the attention of the international public and thus making a decisive contribution to the renewal of the genre.

Hans Werner Henze had a special relationship with Berlin, which started to form in the last weeks of World War 2. He returned to the city frequently, whether as conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, as a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg or to attend the numerous premieres and first performances of his operas at Berlin's three opera houses.

In 1984, Hans Werner Henze founded a new youth music festival in Deutschlandsberg, Styria. As is well known, he had already achieved a coup in 1976 with the establishment of the Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte in Montepulciano, Tuscany, with which he had enormously advanced the promotion of artistic expression among children, young people and adult amateurs and demonstrated the social relevance of cultural education.

From 1981 to 1983, Hans Werner Henze spent the last days of October in Northern Styria to develop and perform new music with young people and amateurs. However, those responsible did not want to support his wish to compose with young people, and so the collaboration came to an inevitable end.

Hans Werner Henze founded the Cantiere in 1976 and directed it for five years. With the realisation of joint projects by residents of all ages with internationally renowned artists and young talents, it quickly became one of the most important music festivals in Italy and also in Europe, if the focus is on the educational and social implications.