One of the hallmarks of Hans Werner Henze's music is the ingenuity of his orchestration. From his chamber music to his operas, he uses apparently eccentric combinations of instruments to achieve effects of a timbral delicacy and transparency that mitigate the harmonic complexity and melodic spikiness of the music and give it an immediate sonic appeal. This CD includes works that beautifully illustrate the principle. The newest piece, Ein kleines Potpourri aus der Oper "Boulevard Solitude," dates from 2000, but the opera ...
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One of the hallmarks of Hans Werner Henze's music is the ingenuity of his orchestration. From his chamber music to his operas, he uses apparently eccentric combinations of instruments to achieve effects of a timbral delicacy and transparency that mitigate the harmonic complexity and melodic spikiness of the music and give it an immediate sonic appeal. This CD includes works that beautifully illustrate the principle. The newest piece, Ein kleines Potpourri aus der Oper "Boulevard Solitude," dates from 2000, but the opera from which it's derived is was one of his earliest, written half a century earlier. The opera contains some of his brashest and densest music, but his reworking of selections from it, scored for the remarkable ensemble of flute, vibraphone, harp, and piano, is a model of exquisite delicacy. It's one of the most charming and accessible pieces of (essentially) atonal twenty first century chamber music one is likely to encounter. The 1974 Carillon, Récitativ, Masque, for mandolin, guitar,...
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