The sonatas recorded here encompass almost the entirety of Hans Werner Henze’s creative life. Composed in difficult conditions just after WWII, the Violin Sonata covers the broadest range of human emotions, and is in some ways a study for the extraordinary First Violin Concerto (recorded by Peter Sheppard Skærved on 8.557738). Steeped in Italian mythology, the Solo Violin Sonata is ‘a real piece of theatre’, as is the emotionally shattering Viola Sonata, written straight after the completion of the ballet Orpheus. The Violin Sonatina is drawn from Henze’s children’s opera Pollicino, and the two remaining miniatures are memorials for lost colleagues.