Hans Werner Henze

Music critics don’t talk as frequently these days about Hans Werner Henze as much as his generational peers—Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter and even the small-ensemble composer György Kurtág. Maybe it’s because Henze’s hard to pin down stylistically: The chameleon composer has jumped around from Stravinskyian neoclassicism (mid-1940s) to Darmstadt serialism (late ’40s) to a more conservative, Romantically laced idiom since the 1950s. The three works here—“Nachtstücke und Arien” (1957); Adagio, Fuge und Manadentanz Suite aus der Oper “Die Bassariden” (1964); and the Symphonie No. 8 (1993)—may not feature the creativity from his first two periods, but they’re punchy representations of the music he wrote after his liberating, postwar move to Italy in 1953.

In the “Nachtstücke” arias, soprano Claudia Barainsky belts richly anguished vocals, with almost foggy support from the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln. (According to the liner notes, Boulez stormed out of this premiere because he felt it sounded too pretty.) Particularly lush is the Adagio from the suite of Henze’s opera Die Bassariden, a ghost from late-19th-century Vienna.

Markus Stenz sharply leads the GOK in the austere and pounding Symphonie No. 8, surprisingly inspired by Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. After wandering through ten minutes of what feels like a nuclear plant, with the symphony’s shrieking brass and martial snares, Henze mischievously kicks open the steel doors to reveal a poppy field where twee string work approximates a Classical-era trio. The contrast is awesome. The last movement, a languorous adagio, marches toward a peaceful death when the flutes sputter out a final, futile cry of desperation. Before you dive into Henze’s meatier operas and oratorios, this might be the teaser you need for your fledgling Henze library.

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