Henze: Choral Works.(Sound Recording Review)

Gruberova, Moser, Mayr; Krenn, Fischer-Dieskau; ORF Choir and Symphony Orchestra, Segerstam, Horvat. Texts and translations. Orfeo C 609 031 B (Qualiton, dist.)

In his prickly autobiography, Bohemian Fifths (Princeton, 1999), Hans Werner Henze writes with typical honesty of poet Elsa Morante's dissatisfaction with his setting of her words in the Cantata della Fiaba Estrema. She wanted it to be more passionate, she felt that the text didn't suit his choice of a coloratura soprano as soloist, and she thought Henze should have ignored the "childlike, playful" element of her poem. Henze, on the other hand, felt that his piece was "evangelical" in nature, and that it breathed a "gentle, childlike atmosphere" because of its "lack of sensuality." In retrospect, they were both wrong: it is surely one of the sexiest pieces in the repertoire. The music exudes a languid air of the inexplicability and strangeness of love. It gently gets under the skin with unusual choral effects, the men sometimes singing quickly and softly and the chorus voicing intimate thoughts as a single person. Leif Segerstam catches the mood in a live Salzburg Festival performance with the ORF Choir and Orchestra. Edita Gruberova is a thoroughly equipped soloist able to close out the proceedings on an unaccompanied high E-flat. She certainly could have taken an entirely different career path had the attractions of bel canto not been so strong.

Indeed, singers who shine in Mozart and Schubert are often heard to good effect in Henze's music. When Novae de ...