Word: barcarola
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...composing an extended (26 minutes), virtuosic set of variations for violin and orchestra that preserves the repeating harmonic structure of Vitali's music while steadily growing in complexity. Arien des Orpheus is an elegiac suite from his full-length ballet Orpheus, based on the Greek myth. And in Barcarola, a darkly impressive work for large orchestra, Henze imaginatively and theatrically depicts the gloomy world of Charon, the ferryman of dead souls across the river Styx. On display in each were Henze's command of orchestration, his sturdy sense of musical architecture and his unerring ear for effective sonorities...
...Barcarola is dedicated to the late Paul Dessau, a German composer who shared Henze's Marxism. Henze's political beliefs stem from his upbringing in Nazi Germany and his experiences as a soldier in World War II, a background, he says, that "was sufficient to create a politically minded person. Either that or a monk." Explains Henze: "Politics has become so much a part of my thinking and feeling that it is difficult to say where politics ends and my music begins." In 1968 the premiere of his oratorio The Raft of the Medusa had to be aborted...
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