Bohemian Fifths

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating reading by a Bohemian musical aristocrat
Review: Hans Werner Henze has led a rich,full musical life. He had good vital instincts from the start,opting to foster high level contacts within the musical institutions in Europe East and West. The West has served him well first with early operatic productions,a succession of unbroken commissions and latter recordings by premiere ensembles. He turned away from his own post-war generations quest for a new musical language along the lines of serialized materials and post-Webern gesturing. Instead he found his own voice in a lyrical eclecticism that continually searches for differing dramatic situations, as in painters Gericault's "The Raft of Medusa". This autobiography reveals an active life of schedules,concerts, rehearsals,assisting in teams for the productions of his works, discussions and conducting. Along the way Henze stops to chat with friends for inspiration and support and news,he even pays respects when necessary at the funerals of Auden or composer Luigi Nono. We also find Henze in Cuba with revolutionaries And in East Germany with his friend Paul Dessau. Leftism for Henze is odd, a man who sacrificed nothing was still tauted by the primary venues of the West. But we learn of Henze's continual quest for compositional materials and how politics enters this formula no matter what ideology he happens to share.Also how each work inhabits its own life. His politics does extend to going out on a limb for comrades, as when composer Isang Yun was abducted by the Korean government from Germany to return to prison and torture. Henze assembled a forum for his release in Europe. He also made an arrangement of a song by Theodorakis also a victim of imprisonment. For the musician this autobiography makes fascinating reading on Henze's views, how his music is performed, who is the most sensitive conductor, what composer he admires, how he organizes festivals and venues.I must say I never warmed to his music.