2017/18 SEASON londonsinfonietta.org.uk #UnfinishedBusiness HANS WERNER HENZE: VOICES CONCERt PROgRAmmE WELCOmE Welcome to tonight’s concert, and to the early part Welcome to St John’s Smith Square. Please do of our 50th Anniversary season. not hesitate to approach our Duty Manager and ushers with any questions you may have. The As a chamber ensemble, the London Sinfonietta’s Footstool Restaurant in the Crypt serves interval worldwide reputation is remarkable. It developed and post-concert refreshments. Please note that its fame as a direct result of the extraordinary refreshments are not allowed in the concert hall. performances given by the players and the advocacy of the great post-war composers – We hope you enjoy the concert this evening. If who were hungry to write for and work with the you wish to get in touch with us following your ensemble. Not least, however, the group thrived visit please contact the Visitor Experience Team because of the huge effort, musical integrity and at Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London management skill of the group’s co-founders – SE1 8XX, by phoning 020 3879 9555 or email David Atherton and Nicholas Snowman. David’s [email protected]. We look commitment to new music was evident not only in forward to seeing you again soon. programming but in the commissions offered to the great musical voices of the time. A new repertoire Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward has been created over the years and ‘a piece for Gallery are closed for essential refurbishment until Sinfonietta’ has become short hand for a one-to-a- 2018. During this period, our resident orchestras part, virtuosic and often striking composition. are performing in venues including St John’s Smith Square. One such work is Hans Werner Henze’s Voices – important not least because of the impact it has Find out more at southbankcentre.co.uk/sjss had since it’s compositon. Still performed often as a great showpiece for players, it also captures the spirit of the 1960s, when some composers were so politically engaged that it spilt out into their work. It’s an honour, therefore, to welcome back David Atherton to conduct this work which he was responsible for commissioning, and we also welcome Victoria Simmonds and Daniel Norman to perform it. We are hugely grateful to Arts Council England and other important trusts, individuals and companies Keep in touch who support our work. Without them sharing in londonsinfonietta.org.uk the founding and long-standing vision for this organisation, we would not be here. Please do @Ldn_Sinfonietta think of joining them in supporting our work – from becoming a Pioneer, to supporting a new @londonsinfonietta commission, or ‘adopting’ one of our 50 years through the Sinfonietta Circle. @londonsinfonietta Andrew Burke Chief Executive HANS WERNER HENZE: VOICES Wednesday 11 October 2017 7.30pm, St John’s Smith Square Hans Werner Henze Voices (1973 London Sinfonietta commission) 1. Los poetas cubanos ya no sueñan 2. Prison Song (The Leg-Irons) 3. Keiner oder alle 4. The Electric Cop 5. The Distant Drum 6. 42 Schulkinder 7. Caino 8. Il Pasi 9. Heimkehr 10. Grecia 1970 11. Legende von der Entstehung des Buches Taoteking auf dem Weg des Lasote in die Emigration 12. Gedanken eines Revuemädchens während des Entkleidungsatkes 13. Das wirkliche Messer 14. Recht und billig 15. Patria 16. Screams (Interlude) 17. The Worker 18. Para aconsejar a una dama 19. Roses and Revolutions 20. Vermutung über Hessen 21. Schluß 22. Carnival of Flowers David Atherton conductor Victoria Simmonds mezzo-soprano Daniel Norman tenor Sound Intermedia London Sinfonietta The London Sinfonietta is grateful to Arts Council England for their generous support of the ensemble, as well as the many other individuals, trusts and businesses who enable us to realise our ambitions. HANS WERNER HENZE (1926-2012) Henze memorably described himself as ‘a north German contrapuntal temperament projected into the arioso south’; and the modernist, Schoenbergian and Stravinskyan influences of his earlier work now submitted to the tender sway of a sensuous lyricism clearly evident in the ballet Ondine, the Fünf neapolitanische Lieder for baritone and chamber orchestra, the Nachtstücke und Arien for soprano and large orchestra. To this rich synthesis was added a more austere classical strain in works such as Cantata della fiaba estrema for soprano, chamber chorus and instruments, or Ariosi for soprano, violin and orchestra; while a constructivistic approach was brought to bear on such pieces as Antifone for solo strings, wind and percussion, the cantata Hans Werner Henze was born in Gütersloh, Novae de infinito laudes, and the Kleist-based Westphalia, in 1926 and began composing at opera Der Prinz von Homburg. the age of twelve. He studied at the Brunswick State Music School and, after military service, Henze’s operatic career reached a pitch of at the Institute for Church Music in Heidelberg boldness and acclaim with The Bassarids, a two- with Wolfgang Fortner. He attended the early hour single act conceived as a four-movement Darmstadt International Summer Schools for symphony, premiered in Salzburg in 1966; while New Music, where he met René Leibowitz, his 45-minute second piano concerto of 1967 studying serial technique with him both there was a peak of his more abstract writing. But with and in Paris. Of Henze’s huge catalogue of works, the oratorio Das Floss der Medusa, and more the earliest acknowledged date from 1946: the conspicuously the Versuch über Schweine for Kammerkonzert for piano, flute and strings, and baritone-Sprechgesang and orchestra, both of the the sonata for violin and piano. The following year following year, and the exuberant, aleatory sixth brought the first string quartet, violin concerto and symphony of 1969, a complete change came over symphony. In 1948 he produced his first opera, Henze’s work. the one-act Das Wundertheater, premiered in Heidelberg, and in 1949 his first acknowledged Political protest, deep-dyed into the very fabric ballet, Ballett-Variationen. of the music - and indicated by his periods of residence in Cuba - marks his output of the His first full-scale opera, Boulevard Solitude, 1970s, as attested by the revolutionary ‘recital an updating of the Manon Lescaut story, was for four musicians’ of El Cimarrón, followed by a successfully launched in Hanover in 1952, but concerto for viola and small orchestra, entitled a year later Henze abandoned postwar German Compases, the quasi-theatrical second violin society to settle in Italy, where he lived until his concerto, and the ‘actions for music’ We come passing. His next opera, König Hirsch, and a whole to the River, a stage work to a libretto by Edward series of pieces reflect the warming influence on Bond. him of the Italian environment. VOICES Since the appearance of this work, first performed The choice of the poems in Voices (1973) and at Covent Garden in 1976, the political ferment of the order in which they are arranged reflect my Henze’s creativity has tended to subside. own personal political perspective and emotional Revolutionary ideals invariably lead to disillusion; involvement, and it is this perspective and these but he does count the foundation that same year feelings which give the collection its cohesion, of the Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte - a people’s rather than any narrative or musical structure. arts festival - in the Tuscan town of Montepulciano In some cases, I wanted to use highly developed as ‘one of my few political successes’. post-serial structures and invest them with meaning; that is to say, to use abstract elements Subsequent stage works include two other Bond and force them to be vehicles for concrete collaborations, however: the comic parable of expression. More direct formal materials include The English Cat and the ballet Orpheus; and if jazz, aleatoric writing and elements of music- in the most recent two, Das verratene Meer and theatre. Venus und Adonis, both to a libretto by Hans- Ulrich Treichel, attention is focused on personal In other cases I tried to extend the Weill-Eisler- and psychological experience - as it also is in the Dessau tradition in my own style. The listener seventh symphony or the instrumental (wordless) will also, I hope, detect echoes and influences of Requiem - the cantata- like Symphony No 9, various folk styles, as well as the tradition of the ‘dedicated to the heroes and martyrs of German classical Lied. antifascism’, is there to remind us that vehement political protest still looms large in Henze’s The work was originally scored for fifteen players. imagination. The number may be augmented, however, according to possibilities and necessities of the After the completion of his tenth symphony he available forces. The players, who at various times started working on his opera L’Upupa und der have to hum, talk and sing, form an a capella Triumph der Sohnesliebe which was premiered chorus in No. 17. at the Salzburg Festival in summer 2003 to great © Hans Werner Henze international acclaim. It resulted in many future productions, such as at Teatro Real Madrid, Opera de Lyon, Hamburgische Staatsoper and Semperoper Dresden. In December 2005 the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam premiered the orchestral work Sebastian im Traum which was followed by the opera Phaedra at Staatsoper Berlin in September 2007 with subsequent performances in Brussels, Frankfurt, Vienna and Cologne. A dramatic poem by Franz Werfel inspired Opfergang - Immolatione which was premiered in Rome in January 2010 by Ian Bostridge, Sir John Tomlinson, Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Later that year a new opera, Gisela!, was premiered as part of a major feature within ruhr 2010 and the opera was also produced at Semperoper Dresden a few months later.