In Praise of Hans Werner Henze

These days I utterly despair of the standard repertoire. It seems that in the last three or four decades taste has almost stood still, or gone backwards. I recently read that the last opera to enter in the "standard repertoire" (whatever that means) was Aida from 1924, hardly a big deal perhaps come 1970 perhaps, but a dire emergency come 2016. Bartók seems to be played less, not more, and even the breathtaking wonders of Bluebeard's Castle have failed to enter into the standard opera repertoire.  Schoenberg's Moses und Aron was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera in 1999, and was last staged there in 2003. The only Stravinsky that is routinely played comes from his early years, the most recent of these being The Rite of Spring, which is now over a hundred years old. Late masterpieces such as Agon and Threni are largely ignored. I am horrified.

I also remember it being said that during chamber music contests in which contestants are asked to play twentieth century music, they have to write the rules especially so as to stop everyone from playing Shostakovich. I graduated past my Shostakovich phase some two decades ago. I see the attraction very much, particularly the late string quartets, but, oddly enough, I find myself very seldom, returning to his music. I find it something of chore to listen to Shostakovich, a not unpleasant one, but a chore nonetheless. The same cannot be said for Henze.

In many ways, Henze always strikes me as your thinking person's Shostakovich. By that, I mean that for years I tended to dismiss Henze as being too much a case of light avante garde. It didn't seem hard hitting or radical enough. Sad to say, it was only after his death back in 2012—it seems only yesterday—that I started to listen again. In some ways, Henze seems a paradox, with a musical language that is so post-war avant garde, yet one at the same time so incredibly enticing, sumptuous, and altogether sensuous. There may have been a time when I would felt guilty listening to something like this, especially coming from a political radical like Henze, but the time has come to lose that guilt and to celebrate his strengths instead.

The more I listen, the more I look past that sensuousness, awash with all that sheer and utterly scandalous listenability, and all I hear is the delightful excesses of a deep and wonderful poetry. I found myself rather charmed by Pierre-Laurent Aimard's description of French composer, Olivier Messiaen, as le Bruckner français du XXe siècle (though, alas, I cannot find the source citation for this). If those two Catholic composers wrote music that expressed the grand mysteries of their faith, then Henze is your Marxist Bruckner without a God. Yet, in every note that Henze wrote there is such deep mystery like Bruckner, yet with the same earthly immediacy of a Mahler. God may be dead, but poetry is not, nor mystery, nor wonder at the vast being of the world.

Oh how I despair at the reactionary, petite bourgeois conservatism of our neoliberal age, one that merely wants to delight in Mozart and Puccini sweetmeats while donning a peruke. But please, dear reader, please open your heart to Henze's vast universe of endless poetic wonder and delight. It will open the doors to a previous hidden garden of the most exquisite delight.

It could change your life. So, with that, with all my heart, I commend Henze to you.

Suggested Listening:

Henze Symphony Nr 7. This surely has to be the place to start. I could imagine this work becoming genuinely popular. There are a couple of recordings, by Sylvain Cambreling conducting the Freiburg Symphony Orchestra (SWR), and Simon Rattle: both are excellent. If there is a movement to watch out for it has to be the slow finale "IV. Ruhig, verhalten". Close your eyes and listen solemnly, for it is just breathtaking.