In the beginning of the 1950s, Hans Werner Henze wrote two radio operas for the former North West German Radio. The genre was developed around the 1930s and means a form of opera without any visual... more

Hans Werner Henze called the opera of Pollicino and Clotide that he wrote in his adopted homeland of Italy, based on the tale of Tom Thumb as told by Collodi, a "fairy tale for music," and dedicated... more

The three orchestral pieces on this CD span a period of 50 years, beginning with the Piano Concerto No. 1 composed in 1950 by the then 24-year-old Henze and ending with "Scorribanda sinfonica"... more

The music seems to dance - whether it's Henze's "Ballett-Variationen" of 1949, his "Vokaltuch der Kammersängerin Rosa Silber" [Vocal fabric] or his full-length opera "Boulevard Solitude" of 1951, of... more

Written fifty years apart, the two beautifully conceived and executed Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 3 bear the hallmarks of the same, powerful artistic personality.

One of Europe's foremost living composers, Hans Werner Henze has written an extraordinarily prolific quantity of music in every genre. This disc of his guitar music spans almost thirty years of his... more

Few living composers besides Hans Werner Henze have enjoyed such remarkable success across such a wide range of musical genres, from large-scale concert and stage works to chamber and instrumental... more

"El Cimarrón" is one of the most important examples of politically engaged music - a milestone in the history of Hans Werner Henze's oeuvre, musical theater that had not been known or mastered... more

One of the great composers of our time turns 80. On this occasion, WERGO publishes Hans Werner Henze's two Orpheus works, "Aristaeus" (world premiere recording) and "Orpheus behind the Wire". Live... more

The composer Hans Werner Henze describes his Ninth Symphony for mixed chorus and orchestra (words by Hans-Ulrich Treichel after the novel "The Seventh Cross" by Anna Seghers) as follows:"What happens... more

Hans Werner Henze's compositional output is dominated by the larger genres with their richly differentiated palette of instrumental colors. This CD with the Ensemble Recherche allows room to, among... more

The symphony has been declared dead countless times over the past century. Nevertheless, Hans Werner Henze sought all his life to come to terms with symphonic form. On the occasion of his Symphony... more