Sinfonia N. 9

The theme of Henze’s Ninth Symphony is his German homeland as he remembers it during the days of his youth and during the war years. He has written this work in homage to all the people who fought back against the oppression of the Third Reich and sacrificed their lives for freedom of thought. Hans-Ulrich Treichel adapted the text from a poem by Anna Seghers. Henze has called the symphony ‘an apotheosis of the terrible and the painful’. The pinnacle of his prolific and varied œuvre, it is worlds apart from ‘Freude schöner Götterfunken’.