Henze: Symphonies 3-5

Album review

The three symphonies of Henze recorded here, his Third, Fourth, and Fifth, are were written over a span of 12 years, and are worlds apart in musical style, but they all reflect the influence on the Mediterranean and all are related to some extent to his stage works. Even though it was written in 1950, before the composer had settled in Italy, the Third Symphony has a sensuous, Mediterranean character, and the titles of the movements refer to ancient mythology. Henze's orchestration is often brilliantly colorful, but here it is particularly sun-drenched and its gestures are more Romantic than is typical in his later work, which sometimes tends toward the acerbic. Soon after its premiere, it was staged as a ballet, Invocation of Apollo. The Fourth and Fifth symphonies were written after the composer's move to Italy and both deal with the clash between Dionysian and Apollonian sensibilities, a theme common in Henze's work, but their soundworlds are less conventionally lyrical and more aggressively modern. The Fourth, in one long movement, was lifted with only minor modification from a long scene that was cut from the premiere of the 1956 opera König Hirsch. Leonard Bernstein commissioned the Fifth Symphony for the New York Philharmonic in 1962, and it derives its core thematic material from the opera Elegy for Young Lovers. All three are masterful examples of orchestral writing and should appeal to fans of contemporary symphonic developments. Henze's music is not always easy to put across; it's dense with detail, and in less skilled hands can sound murky and undifferentiated, but these performances get at the music's essence and do it full justice. Marek Janowski draws absolutely superb playing from Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. The playing is crisply precise, the orchestral sound is clean, and Janowski gives clear shape to the music's lines and contours and arcs. Wergo's sound is detailed and pure, and the ambience is warm and lively.

© TiVo