Le miracle de la rose | Ode to an Aeolian Harp

Since 1985, the Ensemble Modern has enjoyed a fruitful collaboration and artistic friendship with Hans Werner Henze. The composer wrote his guitar concerto Ode to an Aeolian Harp in 1986 for the Ensemble Modern and the guitarist David Tanenbaum, whom he had met in California in 1983. It was commissioned by the Lucerne Festival and the FrankfurtFeste at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt/Main and reflects Henze's interest in the Swabian poet Eduard Mörike at the time. The clarinet concerto Le miracle de la rose had been written four years earlier for the London Sinfonietta, and it is a fantasy on the homonymous text by Jean Genet.