Henze Symphony 8

Why there has not been a recording of Hans Werner Henze's 1993 Eighth Symphony before this 2004 recording is anyone's guess. The work is a masterfully scored, brilliantly evocative, and astoundingly beautiful three-movement piece based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. And yet this performance with Markus Stenz leading the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln is its first and only recording. Thankfully, it is an outstanding release in every way.

James Leonard @ AllMusic

Hans Werner Henze has been a prolific composer over a career spanning six decades, writing extensively in all the standard genres such as symphony, concerto, opera, and song, in a remarkable variety of styles. As he has said, "I am bored by the idea of employing approaches which I have already tried." At times in his career, his controversial political views have attracted almost as much attention as his music.

Hans Werner Henze’s uncompromising individualism and remarkable compositional legacy has ensured him a permanent place in the Western musical landscape. The works in this programme represent his abandonment of avant-garde extremes, and are very much part of this quality of durability in his music. Chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop is an inspiring and powerful voice in the international music scene whose many Naxos recordings include a complete cycle of Brahms’ symphonies as well as the ‘outstanding achievement’ (BBC Music Magazine) of an acclaimed cycle of the symphonies of Prokofiev.

Hans Werner Henze - The Complete Deutsche Grammophon Recordings (2013) {Deutsche Grammophon 4791522}
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© 2013 Deutsche Grammophon | 4791522
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Modern Classical

The composers who made the most decisive contribution to the development of post-war music in Europe were all born in the 1920s: Stockhausen, Boulez, Nono, Berio and Ligeti, to name but five. Shortly after the end of the Second World War, at a time when half of Europe still lay in ruins, they began to look for the basis of a new kind of music freed from the fatal legacy of the past. But few of them reacted as directly or as sensitively to the catastrophe of the National Socialist period as did Hans Werner Henze. And this was true of him both as an artist and as a human being.

Franz Schubert - Symphonien 1-8, Dialog & Eplilog - Jonathan Nott & Bamberger Symphoniker (2011) {6CD Set, Tudor TUD301610}
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© 2011 Tudor Recording | TUD301610
Classical / Orchestral / Romantic

Starting in 2003, Jonathan Nott and the Bamberg Symphony pursued the ambitious project of recording Franz Schubert's symphonies Nos. 1-8, and the SACDs were individually released later that decade to considerable critical praise. This 2011 set of six SACDs brings together the four albums with the symphonies, plus two collections of modern compositions inspired by Schubert's music. Nott's conducting tends to be on the fast side in Schubert, and the Bamberg Symphony is sometimes a little uneven in sound quality. But by and large, they demonstrate a great understanding of Schubert's styles, both in his Classical and Romantic veins, and acquit themselves with enthusiasm and brilliance.