Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 A debut
- 2 Berio
- 3 Paths to Montsalvat
- 4 Carter
- 5 Da lontano
- 6 Gubaidulina
- 7 A handful of pianists
- 8 Purcell 1995
- 9 Around New York
- 10 Tippett
- 11 Being in Assisi
- 12 Boulez
- 13 The composer's voice
- 14 Mozart 1991
- 15 A decade of Don Giovannis
- 16 Henze
- 17 Operatic passions
- 18 Vivier
- 19 At the movies
- 20 Schoenberg on the stage
- 21 Five British composers
- 22 Lachenmann
- 23 Mapping Mtsensk
- 24 Stockhausen
- 25 Behind the rusting Curtain
- 26 Verdi at the Met
- 27 A quintet of singers
- 28 Schnittke
- 29 How it was, maybe
- 30 Reich
- 31 Tracks in Allemonde
- 32 Birtwistle
- 33 A departure
- Further reading and listening
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 A debut
- 2 Berio
- 3 Paths to Montsalvat
- 4 Carter
- 5 Da lontano
- 6 Gubaidulina
- 7 A handful of pianists
- 8 Purcell 1995
- 9 Around New York
- 10 Tippett
- 11 Being in Assisi
- 12 Boulez
- 13 The composer's voice
- 14 Mozart 1991
- 15 A decade of Don Giovannis
- 16 Henze
- 17 Operatic passions
- 18 Vivier
- 19 At the movies
- 20 Schoenberg on the stage
- 21 Five British composers
- 22 Lachenmann
- 23 Mapping Mtsensk
- 24 Stockhausen
- 25 Behind the rusting Curtain
- 26 Verdi at the Met
- 27 A quintet of singers
- 28 Schnittke
- 29 How it was, maybe
- 30 Reich
- 31 Tracks in Allemonde
- 32 Birtwistle
- 33 A departure
- Further reading and listening
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
Summary
Never mind the physical strains of being sixty-seven years old, Hans Werner Henze was in buoyant mood. Despite a wrist injury, he had finished his new symphony. Now here he was in Symphony Hall, doing his utmost to disregard a damaged knee, marching down the aisle without his stick to acknowledge the applause for that symphony's first performance, by Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony. The spectacle was that of a man still robustly upright in his bearing: in the dark three-piece suit and bow tie he chose for this premiere, he looked like a count, or the director of a Gymnasium. And the formal attire set off the pushing energy of his head, a head which seems to have been not only baldened but dynamized by time, so that it is now a vigorous egg of flesh, fronted by a muscle of a face.
As is the physical appearance, so is the music: thoroughly groomed, making a proud show of the most conventional dress, and bursting with being. The bulging catalogue tells the same story of capability. One could build a whole orchestral season out of Henze's works—symphonies (the Boston commission is No.8), concertos and other pieces—or a whole opera season out of what he has produced for the stage. He is, in everything, the complete professional, fulfilling those nineteenth-century demands of form and genre which continue to rule our concert and operatic life.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Substance of Things HeardWritings about Music, pp. 155 - 159Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2005