Hans Werner Henze

In the early 1950s Hans Werner Henze wrote two radio operas for the North West German Radio, a genre without any visual element in which the plot reaches the listener through a clear text and acoustic effects such as echo and sound collage. This disc presents the premiere of their revised versions, recorded in the Philharmonie in Cologne on 27 September 1996.

Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor, 1951, revised 1994) sets Franz Kafka's story. Das Ende einer Welt (The End of a World, 1953, revised 1993) has a libretto by Wolfgang Hildesheimer, and Henze himself takes the role of the narrator. Markus Stenz conducts the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, the Kölner Domchor and the WDR Rundfunkchor Köln. The baritone Roland Hermann is the Country Doctor, with Isolde Siebert, Daphne Evangelatos, Roderic M. Keating and others in the remaining roles. Henze was born in Gütersloh in 1926 and died in Dresden in 2012. He had studied composition with Wolfgang Fortner in Heidelberg and attended the Darmstadt courses from their start in 1946.

Ein Landarzt follows Kafka's text in fourteen short sections, from "Ich war in großer Verlegenheit" to the doctor's discovery of the patient's wound, an oppressive surrealism set for voices, boys' soprano, choir and orchestra. Das Ende einer Welt is a scathing satire built as a chain of closed numbers: barcarolle, three canzonettas, ball music, an Air suisse, a melodrama, a Sonata da camera, a minuet and a dramatic scene with chorale. Ein Landarzt has the same scoring in its radio and stage versions, with an orchestra that includes harp, celesta, organ and three pianos, two of them prepared.

Henze wrote of the inner connection between the two works: "the state of a man who has taken leave of his senses, of being exposed, of the most terrible isolation." One is a nightmare vision of horror, the other a cynical farce. Both may reflect his disquiet in the early fifties at a society that changed while remaining the same at its core. Ein Landarzt was first broadcast by the NWDR on 29 November 1951, conducted by Harry Hermann Spitz. In 1964 Henze made stage versions of both works, which opened together at the Städtische Bühnen in Frankfurt on 30 November 1965 under Wolfgang Rennert.

CD with a 96-page booklet including the libretti, in a slipcase, Wergo WER 6666 2, released in 2005 in the series Hans Werner Henze at Wergo, 63 minutes.