DVD Videos

“This New Year's Concert adds Verdi and Wagner, in their anniversary year, to a quite unusual selection of Straussian pieces, with Welser-Möst a fine, serious conductor.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2013 *****

“Welser-Möst can cut a curiously professorial figure, but the playing he gets from the orchestra really sparkles in an offbeat programme that includes 11 New Year’s Day premieres” Sunday Times, 27th January 2013

“The title of Henze's 'German comedy in 11 tableaux based on the Arabic' translates as 'The Hoopoe and the Triumph of Filial Love'.
Setting his own libretto, and regarding the work as his farewell to the lyric stage, the composer casts a wryly retrospective eye on the magic and absurdity of the medium. This parable of the good son, al Kasim, who embarks on a dangerous quest for the beautiful, exotic hoopoe bird lost and longed for by his father, follows many time-honoured operatic precedents as the hero undergoes various trials and tribulations before finding true love and returning home safely, to be greeted by his grateful and loving father.
During al Kasim's quest for the hoopoe, his main companion and helper is a gently comic 'demon' who's more a fallen guardian angel than a Mephistopheles. The composer's affection seems centred on this character, portrayed by John Mark Ainsley with a restraint that makes the element of pathos the more effective.
During this final 10 minutes the music is purely orchestral, its poetic blend of eloquence and regret as touching in its distinctive way as Strauss's valedictory epilogue for Capriccio.
This recording from the Salzburg premiere is in most respects a delight for both eye and ear.
It's no great weakness that the young lovers, well sung and acted by Matthias Goerne and Laura Aikin, seem relatively one-dimensional alongside Ainsley's helpful, bewildered demon, and the stage production fits the work's knowingly light-hearted tone without overdoing the comic exoticism. With strong support from such seasoned character-singers as Hanna Schwarz and Alfred Muff, the only weak link is the rather pallid countertenor of Axel Köhler.
Technically, Brian Large is well practised in the art of avoiding excessive nudging of the viewer with obtrusively prolonged close-ups, and Markus Stenz is the ideal conductor to bring out the essential threads of Henze's richly diffuse musical weave.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“…this is a superb line-up, well marshalled by conductor Christoph von Dohnáyi who gets plenty of incisiveness in the skewed neo-classical idiom soon submerged in post-Romantic chaos.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2009 ****

“Ernst Wild's film (originally made for Unitel) documents the premiere production, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin: one which was faithful to the 1830 setting… DG took all the musicians into the studio a couple of years later and, alas, this is what you hear: one ideally clear musical realisation tangled up with a no less professional set of pictures. As our deceived and deluded heroine, Edith Mathis is as wonderful to see as to hear, but somehow not at the same time.” Gramophone Magazine, February 2009

“Der Prinz von Homburg (1958-60) was composed at a time of burgeoning acclaim for Henze. The librettist, Ingeborg Bachmann, fashioned a splendid reduction of Kleist's famous drama of the dreamy aristocrat who, distracted by love into disobeying orders in battle, is given the choice of escaping condemnation if he feels the verdict unjust. Only when he accepts the inevitability of his sentence, and walks out to face execution, is he pardoned.
Henze's crisp and vital music is a remarkable, natural-sounding fusion (controversially for the time) of the influences of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. And Eckhart Schmidt's film is a most faithful record of Lehnhoff's 1994 production.
Le Roux is almost ideal as the lovestruck dreamer Prince, alternately distracted and impetuous. His chemistry with MariAnne Häggander – who sings beautifully – is tangible, essential for a successful production, though it's William Cochran, rich-voiced and expressively stern as the severe but not unbending Elector, who steals the show. Sawallisch directs the Bavarian State Orchestra impeccably, the sound spacious and clear. Der Prinz von Homburg may not be as spectacular as König Hirsch or The Bassarids, or as directly popular as Der junge Lord, but it remains one of Henze's most completely achieved and important operas. Its appearance on DVD (there's no CD equivalent) is unequivocal cause for celebration.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Henze's first opera, premiered in 1952, already has the wide-ranging melodic lines and rich harmonies, the rhythmic drive and jazz inflexions of his mature style. Laura Aikin and Pär Lindskog play the ill-fated principals with complete confidence and accuracy: The camera-work sensitively mirrors Lehnhoff's direction.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2008 ****

“The sceptical voices were disappointingly persistent when the Royal Opera's reopening season in 2000 staged the UK premiere of Henze's first opera. Could a 90-minute one-acter by a 26-year-old hold attention, and fill seats? That it did so, and eventually did so triumphantly, was a measure not only of the composer's precocious theatrical gifts but of Nikolaus Lehnhoff's production, which held faith with the decision of Henze and his librettist Grete Weil to update Prévost's story to the period of its premiere in 1952. The action centres around a grand central railway station, full of the impersonal grandeur and busy movement of human flotsam and jetsam that are the natural property of such places.
Billy Wilder and Henri-Georges Clouzot make their mark on the continual cutting between scenes; Xavi Bové's direction for video is unusually subtle, taking full advantage of Henze's extended intermezzi to watch clocks and art-deco pillars.
Bernhard Kontarsky's pacing was tighter in London, catching more of the clickety-clack of Henze's percussion writing but Peskó and the Liceu band are up to the mark, letting the sly allusions to jazz and Weill in the intermezzi live on borrowed time. Henze's Manon is knowingly self-condemned from the outset, one feels, with greater self-possession than her literary and operatic ancestors from Prévost to Puccini. Not that that makes for static loss of drama or fulfilment, when her story gradually cedes to the hopeless infatuation of des Grieux. Laura Aikin is a strong, sluttish Manon, fuller of voice and more voluptuous of figure than the devastating femme fatale of Alexandra von der Weth at Covent Garden. Both steal the show in their own way, as Lulus deserve to.
Pär Lindskog reprises his central role, at least as much Rodolfo as Alwa. Tom Fox as Lescaut could afford to bluster and shout a little less, but the smaller roles always bear the composer's legato lines in mind. Henze takes a bow at the end, and it must have been moving for him to see how his forgotten child has grown up and stood on his own feet.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“…Nikolaus Lehnhoff's production… held faith with the decision of Henze and his librettist Grete Weil to update Prévost's story to the period of its premiere in 1952. The action centre around a grand central railway stations, full of the impersonal grandeur and busy movement of human flotsam and jetsam that are the natural property of such places. ...Peskó and the Lieceu band are up to the mark, letting the sly allusions to jazz and Weill in the intermezzi live on borrowed time. Laura Aikin is a strong sluttish Manon, fuller of voice and more voluptuous of figure than the devastating femme fatale of Alexandra van der Weth at Covent Garden. Both steal the show in their own way, as Lulus deserve to.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2007

“…they have hit the operatic jackpot: an intelligent production that should appeal to anyone with a broad interest in 20th-century music, cinema, theatre, art or design.” The Independent