Customer Reviews

Henze: Undine, ballet in three acts (complete)

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This CD is an absolute must for fans of ballet and romantic music, where Henze adapted perfectly to the requirements of ballet-dancers and the literature about Undine to a point where one would not recognize this piece as being from Henze. Hearing it one would like to have more of his opera/ballet works on CD, for example the opera 'Der Prinz von Homburg', which is unfortunately not available on CD, although it has been composed around 1960 and also is very interesting, but requires many excellent singers of Wagner-like performance.

Balletomanes may have heard some of Henze's more typical ballet scores and found them a little uneasy on the ear, although they always are exactly attuned to the choreography and with further listening rapidly become more appealing. This however, is a slightly different genre and even the first note sums up neatly what is to follow. I was lucky enough to see the ballet recently matched with Ashton's brilliant choreography (although it was originally criticised) and the music so struck a chord that I had to get a CD copy (not so straightforward). The CD set is masterful with Knussen paying attention to Henze's score in great detail and I could see the ballet in my mind's eye all over again.
For atonal music to have such instant power, appeal and to convey such a potent image of the ballet is incredible.

This music by Henze!! An exquisitely realised score in every way, music maker composer/conductor Oliver Knussen sees and understands Everything in this extraordinary score, with fetching results guaranteed to please! Perfect music making by the London Sinfonietta, and again, an extraordinary over-arching design of the piece by Knussen, Master of the orchestra and the revelation of her secrets. Henze's marvelous patina of intelligence is poured over every square inch of music here, and there is such naturalness in the way the score unfolds. By Knussen's obsessive attention to the detail of both musical and theatrical palettes, he forges in this recording an integral understanding of a modern masterpiece. The score is like a veiled prize that these musicians audaciously and seductively unsheathe moment by moment; it's a shattering work, with shining DG sonics--- the vibrancy and transparency of the strings in the boat music in Act 2 alone is worth the price of this set. Harrowing and brilliant-- you'd have to be a mummy not to feel the thrill of this superb score and its expert craftsmen and women! Highest recommendation -- GET IT!

It is always wonderful to encounter a work such as Henze's Undine, where you realize that what you've got is, in fact, a work that can stand alongside the best of Stravinsky's or Ravel's ballets. It is, in short, a genuine, riveting masterpiece. Originally titled "Ondine", Henze's ballet was written for Sir Frederick Ashton in 1958 and is based on a novella by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué (the storyline is more or less the usual one). As Richard Jones put it, it is a "20th century full-length ballet score that has the depth of a masterwork." It is a luminous, variagetd but often ravishingly opulent, genuinely romantic score - modern, but mostly tonal and stylistically suggesting a mixture of Richard Strauss, Stravinsky and Ravel - but never sounding anything other than Henze himself (though Henze in his early, neo-classically oriented phase). It is instantly appealing and accessible, even though it would have been uncompromisingly modern in 1958 (the critical reactions at the time were mixed - it was seen as too modern by balletomanes and reactionary by the avant-garde movement).

The score opens magically and mysteriously, immediately setting the tone, but soon launches into quicker music of propulsive rhythms and ferocious drama. Throughout the work, the various elements are expertly put together (the combination of almost ethereally lush, atmospheric beauty and astringent intensity never sounds disjointed), with too many memorable moments to count, in particular among Henze's ingenious use of a huge variety of rhythmic tricks and techniques. It is always gorgeously colorful and wonderfully scored, never afraid of employing such elements as nature painting (sea evocations, deep forests, clouds, and they have rarely been more evocatively done), and culminating in a most absorbingly, heart-renderingly moving passacaglia - in short, Henze's Undine manages to achieve the trick of being an obvious continuation of the balletic tradition preceding it while at the same time being innovatively modern, and one of the greatest ballets of all time to boost.

Fortunately, the performance is itself a wonder. I cannot really imagine a more mesmerizingly evocative, fiery and warmly colorful performance than the one we get from he London Sinfonietta here. Oliver Knussen is of course the exact right person to achieve a magic sense of wonder in contemporary music, and this must rank among his greatest achievements yet in that respect. Peter Donohoe is an utterly convincing soloists as well (e.g. in the somewhat sardonically humorous miniature piano concerto in Act 2). The recording is magnificent; clean, warm and detailed. In short, this is an essential release of a work that deserves to rank among the greatest artistic achievements of the 20th century, and unmissable for anyone who has even the most passing affection for Ravel's or Stravinsky's ballets.