Rome will mark the centenary of Hans Werner Henze’s birth with a performance of Voices, the composer’s large-scale 1973 cycle of songs. The event, presented by the Romaeuropa Festival and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, will take place on November 4 at 8 p.m. at the Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna of the Auditorium Parco della Musica.
The New European Ensemble, conducted by Carlo Boccadoro, will perform the work with contralto Carina Vinke and tenor Peter Tantsits. Voices brings together 22 poems and compositions in a wide-ranging mosaic of languages, sounds and testimonies shaped by the political and social tensions of the 20th century.
The texts address freedom, oppression, war, inequality and social justice. They draw on poets and authors including Bertolt Brecht, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Heinrich Heine and Ho Chi Minh, as well as poetry from Cuba, the African American tradition and the Italian Resistance.
Completed in June 1973, Voices was created in Italy, where Henze had settled after leaving Germany in 1953 because of the postwar climate of political and social intolerance. Following periods in Ischia and Naples, he made Villa La Leprara in Marino, in the Castelli Romani, his home and turned it into a meeting place for musicians, artists and intellectuals. The cycle’s closing piece, Das Blumenfest, was also written in Marino.
The score uses around 70 instruments and incorporates electronic devices, tape recordings, excerpts from political speeches, everyday noises and other sounds from reality. Henze’s vocal writing moves beyond conventional singing, combining melody with declamation, Sprechgesang, speech, cries and highly extended forms of expression.
Sources: ANSA Cultura.