Hans Werner Henze

Hans Werner Henze was one of the most significant and prolific composers of the late twentieth century. Born in Gütersloh, Westphalia, in 1926, he came of age in Nazi Germany: enrolled in the Hitler Youth as a boy, conscripted in 1944, and taken prisoner by the British before the war’s end. These experiences, combined with his homosexuality (then criminalized in Germany), drove him into permanent exile in Italy from 1953, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Henze’s music defies easy categorization. Having studied briefly with the serialists at Darmstadt, he rejected their dogmatism in favor of a freely eclectic style drawing on serialism, tonality, Stravinsky, Italian opera, Arabic music, and jazz. His vast output includes ten symphonies, numerous operas and ballets, concertos, and chamber works. Major successes came at the Salzburg Festival with Die Bassariden (1966) and L’Upupa (2003).

In the 1960s, Henze became politically radicalized, joining the Italian Communist Party and spending 1969-70 teaching in Cuba. Yet his political convictions never simplified his music, which remained as rich and complex as his own contradictory life. He died in Dresden in 2012, aged eighty-six.

The Berliner Philharmoniker first played his Barcarola in 1982 under the composer’s own baton.