HANS WERNER HENZE.(Review)

Ian Bostridge [] "HANS WERNER HENZE" Sechs Gesange Aus dem Arabischen, Three Auden Songs. With Drake, piano. Texts and translations. EMI 5 57112

Ian Bostridge has a vocal presence and musicality that not only captivate audiences but inspire composers to create for him. His performances -- focused, intense, subtle, sculpted -- are built around a profound understanding of the music and texts he sings. This is a supremely intelligent musician, totally in control, yet one who knows how to lose himself once he's learned every syllable and grace note in question. In a word, he becomes possessed, and so do we. (Perhaps it's no accident that he wrote his Oxford dissertation on witchcraft.) German composer Hans Werner Henze was so smitten by Bostridge's voice and presence that he decided to compose a series of six songs for the English tenor. The result: Sechs Gesange aus dem Arabischen (Six Songs from the Arabian).

Henze, who is as prolific as ever at seventy-five, has passed through many periods and styles. The early imprint of serialism remains in much of his music, in spite of the fact that (to the dismay of Boulez and company) he turned his back on the strict technique, disgusted by the dogmatic tyranny of the Darmstadt school. Fascist tactics, in the real and art world, appalled him. He eventually wore his leftist politics on his musical sleeve -- living in self-imposed exile in Italy beginning in 1953, even spending time in Cuba as a sort of musical freedom fighter. He has conquered every genre, writing chamber music, concertos, film music and more than a dozen operas, as well as ten symphonies.

The new song cycle is an ambitious undertaking, for sure, and it achieves mixed results. Henze wrote the texts himself (except the final poem, which is a German translation by Friedrich Ruckert of a poem by Hafiz), so that he would be able "to change and manipulate the words while working on the music, altering them as much as I felt was necessary to help the musical argument, without having to ask anyone's permission to do so." The poems vaguely relate the tragic relationship between Selim and Fatuma (who Henze claims are real people whom he knows). ...