This brings together two of Hans Werner Henze’s most rapturously lyrical works, both completed in the same year, 1963. Being Beauteous is a 15-minute cantata for coloratura soprano, harp and four cellos, setting Rimbaud’s poem of the same name from his cycle Les Illuminations, and surrounds the spiralling, helium-high soprano lines with velvety cello harmonies and delicate harp adornments. Soprano Anna Prohaska captures its strange, fragile, ecstatic quality perfectly.
Despite its title, the final version of Kammermusik 1958 dates from 1963, too, for it was then that Henze added a 12th movement, an epilogue, to the sequence in which tenor settings of the verses of Hölderlin’s hymn In Lieblicher Bläue and movements for solo guitar alternate with instrumental numbers that only rarely use the full ensemble of clarinet, bassoon, horn and strings. The cycle was written for Peter Pears and Julian Bream; the soloists here are Peter Gijsbertsen and Jürgen Ruck, both excellent. Lasting almost 50 minutes, Kammermusik is a much more substantial work than the Rimbaud setting, more musically intricate and perhaps less overtly expressive, too, but it’s one of Henze’s finest, most personal achievements, and superbly played and sung.
