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Tuesday, November 29, 2022

Hans Werner Henze - Symphony No. 9 (Marek Janowski)


Information

Composer: Hans Werner Henze
  1. Symphony No. 9: I. Die Flucht
  2. Symphony No. 9: II. Bei den Toten
  3. Symphony No. 9: III. Bericht der Verfolger
  4. Symphony No. 9: IV. Die Platane
  5. Symphony No. 9: V. Der Sturz
  6. Symphony No. 9: VI. Die Nacht im Dom
  7. Symphony No. 9: VII. Die Rettung

Rundfunkchor Berlin
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin
Marek Janowski, conductor

Date: 2010
Label: Wergo

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Review

Henze’s choral masterpiece in a vivid new recording from some old friends

This is not the Berlin Radio Choir’s first outing in Henze’s Ninth Symphony; they gave the world premiere in 1997 alongside the Berlin Philharmonic under Ingo Metzmacher and it is their pioneering account that was captured on EMI’s rival version. Unlike Beethoven’s Ninth, this really is a choral symphony, with the chorus employed throughout, no soloists to divert attention from the main body and relatively few passages where the orchestra carries the weight of the musical or expressive argument alone. Indeed, chorus and orchestra fuse into a single super-instrumental body, the voices functioning like another section.

Comparing the two versions, there has certainly been no diminution of the chorus’s powers over the past decade. Indeed, in this new recording their tone and range seems, if anything, more refined and attuned to Henze’s searing textures. In Janowski’s hands the textures overall are less edgy than on Metzmacher’s rival – given a more spacious, reverberant acoustic by the EMI engineers, although both versions were set down in the Berlin Philharmonie – and likewise the orchestral textures, which at times have greater suavity and beauty of tone. In such a work, of course, with its connection to the Holocaust and Anna Seghers’s novel The Seventh Cross, beauty of tone may seem of low priority but if nothing else Henze is a communicator and all his scores are designed to be heard. Darmstadt-style indifference to his audience is anathema to him. Perhaps the soaring string melody in the fifth span, The Plunge, has a touch more intensity in Metzmacher’s hands, but Janowski’s horns in the finale more than compensate.

In short, then, this is a worthy rival to EMI’s disc, competitive in all respects. In terms of sound and acoustic, I prefer Wergo’s warmer, more natural product. Highly recommended.

-- Guy Rickards, Gramophone

More reviews:

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Hans Werner Henze (1 July 1926 – 27 October 2012) was a German composer. His large oeuvre of works is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Stravinsky, Italian music, Arabic music and jazz, as well as traditional schools of German composition. Henze was also known for his political convictions. He left Germany for Italy in 1953 because of a perceived intolerance towards his leftist politics and homosexuality. An avowed Marxist and member of the Italian Communist Party, Henze produced compositions honoring Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara.

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Marek Janowski (born 18 February 1939 in Warsaw) is a Polish-born German conductor. He has led the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (1983-87), Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne (1986-90), Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France (1984-2000), Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra (2000-09), Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (2002-16), and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (2005-12). Janowski is currently chief conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic. He has made a number of operatic recordings, including the first digital recording of the complete Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle for RCA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek_Janowski

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