Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlinn, Marek Janowski - Henze Symphonies 2 & 10 (2014)

To mark Marek Janowski's 75th birthday in February 2014, the eagerly awaited complete recording of Hans Werner Henze's symphonies has now been finalised with Symphonies Nos. 2 and 10. Another birthday present is the special distinction recently awarded by the German Record Critics Award: In 2014, the extremely versatile conductor Marek Janowski will receive an honorary award for his Wagner and Henze recordings, among others: an educator of orchestras by grace, an uncompromising fighter for quality. In 1949 Henze received a commission from the South German Radio for his Second Symphony, which was premiered in Stuttgart in the very same year. It was his first large-scale 12-tone composition. The composer later referred to the work as a kind of winter music, grey and sombre. One might think that the experiences of the war had begun to press for a response in my music. In 1997, immediately after the premiere of 'Sinfonia N. 9', the great Swiss patron Paul Sacher approached Henze and said he should immediately undertake a Tenth, to counter the old superstition that it is a composer s ninth and tenth symphonies that pose the greatest threat to his mental and physical well-being (according to Henze). Indeed, it seems as if Henze s Tenth was a liberation from Beethoven as a model, but also from the dark, suffering tone of lamentation in the previous Ninth a tone with which Henze, as he specifically stated, did not want his symphonic writing to come to an end. More than 50 years separate Henze s Second Symphony and his Tenth, which was to be his last.