The Henze year continues to take shape: after the broad lines of the symphonies and the richly coloured world of the orchestral works, this box turns to Henze's music in a more concentrated space - to works in which sonic imagination, formal freedom and personal dedication meet with particular immediacy. At the same time, it remains part of WERGO's edition marking Hans Werner Henze's 100th birthday, bringing together almost all of the recordings released by the label, some of them made under Henze's supervision. The edition makes no claim to completeness, yet it offers an impressive document of a versatility in which his cosmopolitan outlook resonates: culturally, politically and socially, formally and compositionally. Regrouped and divided into groups of works in this edition, the recordings, some of which are no longer available, will be released in five CD box sets.

Following the symphonies and then the orchestral works and instrumental concertos, this box is devoted to chamber music and piano music, before vocal music and stage works complete the cycle. In these smaller forms, Henze emerges as a virtuoso and poetic inventor: with the 5 String Quartets, the two sonatas of Royal Winter Music - indispensable for ambitious concert guitarists - the celebrated Lucy Escott Variations, and instrumental miniatures and dedication pieces that unite intimate musical speech with compositional freedom in the smallest of spaces.