Two vocal works by Hans Werner Henze, conducted by Peter Ruzicka with the NDR Sinfonieorchester. The cantata Being Beauteous (1963) sets Rimbaud, and Kammermusik 1958 sets Hölderlin's hymn In lieblicher Bläue (In Lovely Blue). This is the first recording of Kammermusik 1958 in its version with string orchestra. The disc was placed on the German Record Critics' quarterly list of best recordings in 2016.
Henze was born in Gütersloh in 1926 and died in Dresden in 2012. His youth was darkened by Nazism and war. He soon became one of the most performed composers of his time, yet the avant-garde shunned him as a "traitor", a charge he called absolutely senseless. Being Beauteous is sung by Anna Prohaska, with harpist Sophia Whitson and the cellists Andreas Grünkorn, Fabian Diederichs, Katharina Kühl and Valentin Priebus. In Kammermusik 1958 the soloists are tenor Peter Gijsbertsen and guitarist Jürgen Ruck. Both were recorded in the Rolf-Liebermann-Studio of NDR in Hamburg, on 25 January 2013 and 3 May 2015, for the series NDR das neue werk.
Henze wrote Being Beauteous, for coloratura soprano, harp and four cellos, soon after his first trip to the USA. In Manhattan and Harlem he saw wealth and poverty side by side, and felt Rimbaud's prose poem from Les Illuminations had anticipated that conflict between abundance and decay. In his words, each thought of the poem is treated as a small aria. The arias are framed by short cello quartets with harp, which are variations of one another.
Kammermusik 1958, for tenor, guitar and eight instruments, grew from sketches made in Greece in the summer of 1958. There his love of the Mediterranean merged with Hölderlin's idealisation of antiquity. "The stones began to sing", Henze recalled. The work was premiered by NDR in Hamburg on 26 November 1958, with Peter Pears, Julian Bream and Henze conducting. It is dedicated to Benjamin Britten. In 1963 Henze added a purely orchestral Adagio as a new finale, bringing it to thirteen movements, three of them for guitar alone.
CD, Wergo WER 7334 2, released in 2016, in the series Hans Werner Henze at Wergo.
