CANCELLED: Eine Kleine Henze Fest

“Eine Kleine Henze Fest” is a concert of Hans Werner Henze’s chamber music, with performances by Amaranth Quartet, Fog City Guitar Duo, bassist Richard Worn, tenor Sam Faustine, and guitarist Patrick Smith. The program includes three pieces that represent three different creative periods in Henze’s life. His solo bass work, “S. Biagio 9 Agosto Ore 1207” dates from 1977 and is labeled a “memory for bass solo”, referencing a specific moment in time at the church of San Biagio in Montepulciano, Italy, where Henze was directing a music festival. “Minette: Songs of Love and Regret for Two Guitars” dates from 1998 and is a reworking of material from his own 1983 opera “The English Cat”. Rearranged into a seven movement suite for two guitars, “Minette” adapts the titular heroine’s seven arias to give a sense of the dramatic arc of the original opera. The earliest and most expansive piece on the program, “Kammermusik 1958” is a 45 minute setting of the poetry of Friederich Holderlin, the great Romantic poet whose mental instability confined him to a single room for the last 36 years of his life. “Kammermusik” sets his beautiful but eerily confusing “In Lieblicher Bläue” (In Beautiful Blue) in a 13 movement structure that alternates between movements for the full ensemble, the 8 solo instruments, tenor and guitar, and solo guitar.