Hans Werner Henze (1926-2012)
Friday, December 19, 2025
Concert Hall, Helsinki Music Centre, Mannerheimintie 13 A, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
Mendelssohn’s MND Overture (Opus 21) first, Hannu Lintu and FRSO conjuring an ethereal sound played with agility to create an outdoors-airy and enchanted world, woodwind details often obscured springing to the ears, tempos not rushed. Delightful and romantic. Also Shakespeare-connected, Henze’s Symphony No.8 (completed in 1993 for the Boston Symphony and Seiji Ozawa), music that is airborne from the off, Puckish, and if the orchestration is sometimes over-detailed, then ideas and development remain lucid and dressed in ever-changing colours, Lintu fastidiously observant of dynamics and balances, a wondrous atmosphere created. The complex, tongue-twisting second movement, mixes emphasis and wit for burlesque purposes, music that travels. Finally, raptness, sun glinting on water, Henze’s brushes and canvases ravishing the senses with a Bergian rapture and catharsis to reconcile a close-on thirty-minute work that acknowledges a literary influence but keeps cards close to its chest as to how.
Before the interval, Truls Mørk essayed Schumann’s introspective Cello Concerto, playing with a lean if expressive clarity, ditto the tactful FRSO, intimacy and musing holding the attention when sinking into the reverie of the slow movement, an extension of the first one, here with an ink-still-wet quality, completed by an animated Finale no faster than it needed to be; wisely Mørk decided that Schumann’s short cadenza was sufficient. His encore was the ‘Sarabande’ from JSB’s C-minor Suite, BWV1011. To conclude the concert, a return to Mendelssohn’s MND score, Opus 61 this time – a buoyant ‘Scherzo’, a flowing ‘Nocturne’ (notable horns), and a dignified ‘Wedding March’.
Felix Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Overture
Robert Schumann: Cello Concerto A Minor Op. 129
Hans Werner Henze: Symphony No. 8
Felix Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, incidental music
“My Sinfonia No. 8 is not at all tragic or moody like the Seventh. It is a summer piece and is based on three moments from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, writes Hans Werner Henze. This, however, is all we get to know from the composer regarding the work’s reference to Shakespeare’s comedy. On closer examination of the three-movement symphony it turns out that the first movement is a fantasia on Oberon’s order to Puck to search for the magic flower. In the second movement, Henze apparently set the love scenes between Titania and Bottom to music. Ultimately, the final movement shines gracefully and peacefully as if everything that had happened before had only been a dream. [Schott]
I Allegro; II Allegramente con comodo tenerezza e ballabilità; III Adagio
Orchestration…
2 (1. auch Picc., 2. auch Picc. u. Altfl.) · 2 (2. auch Engl. Hr.) · 2 (2. auch Bassklar.) · 2 (2. auch Kfg.) – 4 · 2 · 1 · Basspos. · 1 – P. S. (3 hg. Beck. · 3 Tamt. · Schellentr. · 3 Tomt. · Mil. Tr. · gr. Tr. [mit u. ohne Beck.] · Tempelbl. · Peitsche · Marimba · Vibr. · Glsp · chin. Gong · Fingerzimb.) (3 Spieler) – Hfe. · Cel. · Klav. – Str.
Smells highly of AI.
I suggest some nasal surgery.