ensemble recherche. Wergo WER 6727 2 ****

Hans Werner Henze, who just turned 84, is a figure whose fusion of romanticism, left-wing politics (including a flirtation with Cuba) and the avant-garde has long guaranteed at least a whiff of controversy. Two of the 12 pieces collected are substantial chamber works, the 25-minute

Trio in Three Movements

(1998) and the 16-minute

Sonata for Six Players

, this latter originally written for Alain Resnais’s 1984 film,

L’amour à mort

. There’s also an oddly titled minuscule piano trio, Adagio adagio.

The rest are short pieces (under five-minutes) mostly for solo instruments – occasional works written for friends, some as birthday tributes, others as elegies, most of them first recordings. These include a piano piece for the left hand (for Leon Fleisher), a solo violin Serenade (for Yehudi Menuhin), a solo cello Epitaph (on the death of Paul Dessau) and a Margareten-Walzer (for the birthday of Princess Margaret of Hesse).

See wergo.de