Henze's Concerto for Double Bass was published by Schott. Gary Karr, who commissioned the concerto, wrote about it on his website which you may find interesting:
QUESTION 9: I am doing a project for my master's degree on the 20th century concerto repertoire for the bass, and am very interested in any info you may have about the Henze concerto. I know you have a recording of it, but it is not listed on your website or amazon.com.
Also my attempts to find some of Henze's words about it have yielded no results. Please help!
Thanks so much.
ed paulsen
GKS ANSWER: Dear Mr. Paulsen,
The Henze Concerto was recorded for Deutsche Grammaphone (Henze conducting the English Chamber Orchestra) and was released by them as a CD several years ago. I wrote the company and explained that I wanted to include it on my website, but they were quite haughty and made it clear that they did not deal with small potatoes like me! In fact, they told me that they would not even send me a CD and that I would have to purchase it through normal sources. That's why it never appeared on my website.
Henze was conducting his opera "Elegy for Young Lovers" when I was a student at the Juilliard School in the early 60s. I fell in love with his music and asked him if he would consider writing me a concerto (I was already enjoying an active solo career). He asked me to audition for him and show him the possibilities on the bass. As I was playing for him, the G-string became unraveled around the note F and every time my finger slid over that spot it cut into my skin. Henze noticed the blood dripping from the fingerboard and commented how much that appealed to him. I shall never forget it. Since he was interested and since he was a hot commodity at the time, I went to the Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation and applied for a grant to commission him. It was approved and I gave Henze $8000 to write it. That was a lot of money in the 60s. I premiered the concerto with the Chicago Symphony (Jean Martinon conducting) I believe in 1968. It got rave reviews from the Chicago critic (Bernard Jacobson, who is now the manager of the Philadelphia Orchestra). I had hoped that the concerto would have been a highly lyrical piece, like his opera, but it turned out to me a kind of conversation chamber music piece which communicates with various sections of the orchestra. The writing was not as idiomatic as I would have liked and I never seemed successful in communicating to Henze (by mail) the characteristics of the solo bass. He had me playing seventh double stops in the bottom octave of the instrument which without an open string is impossible. I don't really think that he appreciated the fact that the bass sounds an octave lower than written. For sure, he did not like the concept of solo tuning and refused to write his subsequent bass pieces with scordatura tuning in mind. In fact, I got the distinct feeling that he didn't like me or my ideas. When he offered the solo part for publication by his German publishing company (Schott), he refused to allow me to edit the part and gave it to Georg Hörtnagel who, interestingly, simplified the part. After these slaps in my face, I decided not to push for more performances of this work.
Henze confided in me the true inspiration of this concerto. In order to protect his private life, all I will say is that it is highly sexual and, he said, describes intimate details of his new love affair at the time. He might have been bull ****ting me, but I believed him, even though I couldn't find it in the music. The concerto certainly opened up new doors for technical exploration and, in its own way, expanded the capabilities of the double bass.
Basst wishes, Gary Karr
Good luck playing the concerto. It is surely a masterpiece for the double bass!
