Hans Werner Henze called his Ninth Symphony “an apotheosis of terror and pain” and a summa of his creative output. Written for mixed chorus and orchestra, Sinfonia N. 9 sets words by Hans-Ulrich Treichel after The Seventh Cross, the novel by Anna Seghers, and is dedicated to the heroes and martyrs of German antifascism. Henze was born on 1 July 1926 in Gütersloh, settled in Italy in 1953 and died in Dresden on 27 October 2012. This recording received an Echo Klassik award in 2010 in the category for symphonic recordings of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The performers are the Rundfunkchor Berlin, prepared by its principal conductor Simon Halsey and chorus master Michael Gläser, and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin under Marek Janowski. The recording was made at the Philharmonie Berlin on 21-23 November 2008. Thomas Monnerjahn, Florian Schmidt and Brigitte Siewert were the recording team, Stefan Lang edited the recording and Thomas Schulz wrote the liner notes.
Treichel's text is laid out in seven movements: Die Flucht (The Escape), Bei den Toten (With the Dead), Bericht der Verfolger (Report of the Persecutors), Die Platane (The Plane Tree), Der Sturz (The Plunge), Die Nacht im Dom (The Night in the Cathedral) and Die Rettung (The Rescue). The chorus carries the narrative throughout, and the work runs for 53 minutes without break between its sections on the track list.
Henze described the symphony as an attempt to come to terms with the assaults of an arbitrary and unpredictable world. He also called it a German reality, and above all an expression of respect for those who dared to resist Nazi-Fascist terror and gave their lives to defend freedom of thought. Paul Sacher, according to Henze, urged him to write a Tenth straight after its premiere in 1997. The disc belongs to Wergo's Henze series and to Janowski's complete cycle of the symphonies with the same orchestra, which was completed in 2014 with the Second and Tenth. That year the German Record Critics' Award gave Janowski an honorary prize, citing his Henze recordings among others.
CD, Wergo WER 6722 2, released in 2009.
