Exhibition 'Kabinettausstellung zum 100. Geburtstag von Hans Werner Henze' in MUSEUM ST. LAURENTIUS
Soirée as the opening event for the cabinet exhibition on December 6, 2026, at 5 p.m.
“Three Fairy-Tale Scenes” from Henze’s “Pollicino,” an opera for children from 1981, arranged for two guitars by Jürgen Ruck and Elena Cásoli.
Performed by Jutta Hetges and Georg Cremer.
The music is accompanied by texts in which Henze discusses his work in Montepulciano as well as Sándor Szombati.
Our cabinet exhibition features photos of Hans Werner Henze and Sándor Szombati taken when they met in Montepulciano, now on display for the first time. In the summer of 1991, Henze met Szombati in Italy, when the latter was presenting an exhibition of sound objects in the courtyard of the Museo Civico. At the request of the mayor, the composer himself had established the “Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte” in Montepulciano between 1976 and 1980—a music and theater festival with a workshop character—in response to the cultural crisis prevailing there, bringing together numerous musicians, composers, and theater professionals in Montepulciano at the mayor’s request, due to the cultural crisis there from 1976 to 1980. This initiative, the “Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte,” is a music and theater festival with a workshop-like character that continues to this day, attracting artists, musicians, and their audiences to Tuscany with its interdisciplinary artistic offerings. Students can apply to participate in numerous projects; this year, the festival is, of course, celebrating the 100th birthday of Hans Werner Henze.
The composer Sándor Szombati met him for the second time in May 1992 during the 3rd Munich Biennale at the Gasteig in Munich, where the Hungarian artist had once again set up several of his expansive, sound-based installations, which, for Henze, produced “a softly clinking, whispering, dripping polyphony of great tenderness” that virtually enchanted the exhibition’s visitors, transporting them away from the noise of the times: “Sándor Szombati is a magician who operates at the boundaries between music, matter, and imagery, gently and discreetly drawing attention to the very quiet things in the world that one ‘normally’ overlooks (…)”.
