Hans Werner Henze

Pollicino is the opera Hans Werner Henze called a fairy tale for music, written in his adopted homeland of Italy and dedicated to the children of Montepulciano. It is based on the tale of Tom Thumb as told by Collodi, Grimm and Perrault, with a libretto by Giuseppe Di Leva. This is its first recording, sung in German and played by children and young musicians, and it won an Echo Klassik in 2004 in the category Classics for Children.

Henze (1926-2012), born in Gütersloh, studied with Wolfgang Fortner, settled in Italy in 1953 and in 1976 founded the Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte in Montepulciano. Pollicino was composed in 1979 and 1980 and first staged there on 2 August 1980, at the fifth Cantiere, with children and adults of the town, conducted by Jan Latham-Koenig and directed by Willy Decker. On this recording the title role is sung by Philipp Holstein, with Laila Fischer as Clotilde and Stefan Lisewski as Orco the ogre. Pollicino's parents are Therese Affolter and Thomas Schendel, and others take the remaining parts. The choir and orchestra are students from several Berlin music schools, prepared by Karola Marckardt and Stefan Vanselow and conducted by Jobst Liebrecht. Maria Pflüger plays solo violin and Moritz Eggert solo piano.

The story deals with life and death, difficult relations between parents and children, poverty and hunger, and escape from inhuman conditions. Driven from home by poverty, Pollicino and his six brothers seek shelter in the house of the man-eater Orco, whose daughters are Clotilde and her six sisters. After several adventures the children together turn their fate for the better. Henze writes it as a sequence of short numbers: a waltz, a cabaletta, a Polacca gastronomica, a tango, carillons, a passacaglia interlude and a closing Canzone toscana.

The roles are written for amateur singers. Beside flute, strings, guitars, piano and harmonium, it calls for a family of recorders from sopranino to bass, crumhorns, glockenspiels, xylophones and bowed psalteries, with timpani and five percussionists. The forest animals, among them an owl, a fox, a hare, a hedgehog, a wild boar and a wolf, have parts of their own. The twelve scenes and five interludes last 87 minutes, and the set comes with an extensive booklet and a German-English libretto.

Two CDs with a 112-page booklet in a slipcase, Wergo WER 6664 2, released in 2003 in the series Hans Werner Henze at Wergo.