Of all the works performed in Voices, the South Bank Centre's festival of Hans Werner Henze's music, El Cimarron is the most overtly political. Henze composed this music-theatre piece in 1969-70, after his visit to Castro's Cuba. Committed to the ideals of international socialism, Henze worked on the plantations, gave masterclasses and premiered his Sixth Symphony in Havana.
El Cimarron was conceived in the midst of this revolutionary fervour, and sets texts by Esteban Montejo. Montejo is the "cimarron", the "runaway slave" of the title, and the stories of the horrors of slavery, abuse and attempted escapes are his experiences.
Henze's settings resulted from months of collaboration with the original performers. With the solo baritone, percussionist, guitarist and flautist, Henze experimented with tortuous instrumental effects, and developed elaborate graphic notations. El Cimarron presents a special challenge to modern performers, since the fabric of the piece relies on their own creativity and imagination as much as it does on Henze's composition.
The performance by Psappha, the Manchester-based new music ensemble, featured bass-baritone Stephen Bowen, and a production by Soutra Gilmour. Everything about their interpretation was careful and considered, from the subtle way the lighting suggested different scenes to the detail of the players' performances.
Bowen told his horrific tales with the intimacy of a benevolent bedtime story. The soft-focused sounds of Allan Neave's guitar and Claire O'Neill's flutes were expertly balanced, while Tim Williams's percussion created everything from rustling backdrops to dramatic thunderclaps.
But this perfection was also the biggest problem with this production. There was little sense of anger in Bowen's interpretation, and the players never seemed to be inspired by improvisatory passion. The political force of Montejo's words was neutered by their approach, and the effect was listless and fragmented rather than combative and dynamic. El Cimarron was divorced from its roots in revolutionary struggle, and Henze's relent lessly abstract musical idiom seemed to obscure the directness of Montejo's imagery rather than amplify it.
The Endymion Ensemble's afternoon concert showcased Henze's chamber music of the late 1940s. Apollo et Hyazinthus is an astonishingly assured work, written in 1949, which shows how quickly Henze assimilated modernist idioms into his personal style. A single-movement harpsichord concerto that turns into a scena for mezzo-soprano, it is structurally lucid and warmly expressive.
Louise Mott and the Endymions gave a completely convincing performance, and the players were equally impressive in Henze's 1948 Kammersonate for piano trio. The programme, designed by Henze himself, also included Oliver Knussen's Océan de Terre, a crystalline setting of Apollinaire, which featured soprano Eileen Hulse, and the world premiere of Kenneth Hesketh's fluent and accomplished Netsuke for eight-piece ensemble.
