Most of Hans Werner Henze's music for solo piano, played by Homero Francesch, who has given many first performances of the composer's works. Piano music is only a small part of Henze's catalogue, though he wrote often for the piano together with other instruments, above all the orchestra. Here the solo pieces are gathered on one disc, including music drawn from a film score and from a children's opera.

Hans Werner Henze was born in Gütersloh on 1 July 1926, settled in Italy in 1953 and died in Dresden on 27 October 2012. Homero Francesch, born in Montevideo in 1947 and later a Swiss citizen, studied in Munich after winning a DAAD scholarship in 1967. He was the soloist in the first performance of Henze's Tristan in 1973, and in 1981 he premiered Cherubino, three miniatures for piano, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. In November 1994, the year this disc appeared, he gave the first performance of the Toccata mistica in Cologne.

Une petite phrase comes from Henze's music for the film Un amour de Swann. The Lucy Escott Variations last almost twelve minutes. Cherubino has three movements, Andante cantabile, Sostenuto and Con allegrezza. The Sechs Stücke für junge Pianisten are drawn from the children's opera Pollicino. They include Der Menschenfresser (The Ogre), marked Allegretto barbaro, and its sequel Menschenfressers Traum (The Ogre's Dream), ending with a Margaretenwalzer. The Variationen op. 13, about twelve minutes long, and the three-movement Sonata per pianoforte, about sixteen, close the programme.

Whether a piece dates from forty years before this recording or from the recent past, the composer's hand is recognisable in its melos and gesture and in its handling of established forms. Each piece also shows a living relationship with European, and especially Austrian, piano music. Schott names Haydn and Mozart, Schubert and Beethoven, Bach and Stravinsky, and the composers of the Second Viennese School.

CD, Wergo WER 6239 2, released in 1994, in Wergo's Henze series. Playing time 69:08.