Hans Werner Henze was initially an avant-garde composer but Nachtstücke und Arien symbolised his departure from dodecaphonic writing, to the annoyance of his contemporaries Boulez, Nono and Stockhausen at Darmstadt. With this new direction Henze’s music became highly rhapsodic, as heard in the challenging but lyrical solo cello that suggests the intimate texts of the Englische Liebeslieder. Referring to Goya, Los Caprichos captures the strangeness of this artist’s visions with long-breathed melodic lines and fleeting changes of texture, from military-sounding bustle to moments of profound stillness.

Hans Werner Henze’s uncompromising individualism and remarkable compositional legacy has ensured him a permanent place in the Western musical landscape. The works in this programme represent his abandonment of avant-garde extremes, and are very much part of this quality of durability in his music.

Conductor Marin Alsop is an inspiring and powerful voice in the international music scene whose many Naxos recordings include a complete cycle of Brahms’s symphonies ‘that can be set alongside Klemperer and Karajan and hold pride of place’ (MusicWeb International ), as well as the ‘outstanding achievement’ (BBC Music Magazine) of an acclaimed cycle of the symphonies of Prokofiev.

Marin Alsop is chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, which she leads at Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverein, and on recordings, broadcasts and tours. Her discography includes acclaimed Naxos recordings of symphonies by Brahms with the London Philharmonic, Dvořák with the Baltimore Symphony, and Prokofiev with the São Paulo Symphony. The first and only conductor to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, Alsop received the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award and was the first woman to conduct the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms. She is director of graduate conducting at the Peabody Institute and holds honorary doctorates from Yale University and The Juilliard School.

Soprano Juliane Banse’s diversity of repertoire and working relationship with composers such as Heinz Holliger, and conductors that include Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Chailly, Bernard Haitink, Franz Welser-Möst, Marin Alsop, Zubin Mehta, and Manfred Honeck, have ensured her success both on concert stages and opera houses both at home in Germany and abroad.

Cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan won the Cello First Prize and Gold Medal at the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2011. He has been described as ‘dazzlingly brilliant’ (The Strad) and ‘nothing short of magnificent’ (San Francisco Chronicle) and of his LA Philharmonic debut, the Los Angeles Times said ‘His command of the instrument is extraordinary.’