Hans Werner Henze

Orchestra is the second box of the Hans Werner Henze Edition, published by Wergo for the composer's centenary. After the symphonies, it gathers his orchestral works and concertos on four CDs, from the early Kammerkonzert to the Ouvertüre zu einem Theater, composed in the year of his death. Ballet scores and a strictly built work like Antifone stand side by side, a lively counterweight to the symphonic cycle.

The recordings come from several Wergo productions. Most were made by the NDR Sinfonieorchester, now the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, under Peter Ruzicka in Hamburg in the early 2000s, with the pianist Christopher Tainton and the flautist Matthias Perl. The BBC Symphony Orchestra under Oliver Knussen recorded Los Caprichos, Heliogabalus Imperator, the Englische Liebeslieder with the cellist Anssi Karttunen and the overture in February 2014 at the BBC Maida Vale Studios in London. The Double Bass Concerto is played by Daniele Roccato with the Orchestra Sinfonica Abruzzese under Tonino Battista, from a set recorded in Italy between 2015 and 2019.

The first disc holds the Ballett-Variationen, the Concertino for piano and wind band with percussion, Das Vokaltuch der Kammersängerin Rosa Silber (an exercise with Stravinsky about a picture by Paul Klee), the Kammerkonzert for piano, flute and strings and the symphonic interludes from the opera Boulevard Solitude. The second brings the First Piano Concerto, the Drei sinfonische Etüden, the Quattro Poemi and Antifone, written for the Berlin Philharmonic and scored for eleven solo strings, winds and percussion. Heliogabalus Imperator, an "allegoria per musica", was completed in 1972 for the eightieth birthday of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, introduced by Georg Solti and revised in 1986. The last disc adds La selva incantata and the Scorribanda sinfonica.

Like the whole Edition, which will close with the stage works and an unreleased recording of Der Prinz von Homburg, this box gathers almost all of Henze's Wergo recordings without claiming completeness. Some were made under his supervision, some had gone out of print.

4CD box with 96-page booklet, Wergo WER 6962 2, released in 2026 as volume 2 of the Hans Werner Henze Edition, with the support of the Strecker-Stiftung and the Hans Werner Henze-Stiftung (259'38").