Curious though it may seem for a composer whose international reputation rests primarily on his 16 operas, Glanert’s earliest formative influences – as he conceded to me in an interview more then 25 years ago – were the ‘strange mixture’ of Mahler and Ravel. These were ‘important’ for him ‘because they are two high points, and two extreme points – Mahler for the simple, the dramatic sense of music, Ravel for the artificial masquerade of sounds’. Something of their distinctive orchestral mastery informs Glanert’s own music, stylistically and harmonically rather more contemporary in feel, placing him as the successor to Karl Amadeus Hartmann and Henze. My first experiences of his music, in the mid-1990s, were of his symphonies and orchestral works. Although he had been signed to the prestigious Berlin publishing house Bote & Bock for some time, it was the album (released in 1994) of his first two symphonies, Four Fantasias for piano, and the delicately scored Mahler/Skizze (1989) on Schott’s house label, Wergo, that electrified my ear. The single-movement First Symphony (1984-85) has been described by its composer as ‘a collection of ruins of symphonies’ in a formal plan designed to bring about an ‘auto-destruction of the structure’. Its successor was jointly an affirmation and contradiction of that premiss, bearing the title Drei Gesänge aus ‘Carmen’ von Wolf Wondratschek (1988-90).

As the title suggests, the starting point for No 2 came from an exercise to write a song-set that grew into something larger (it runs to a full half-hour, half as long again as No 1). In a nod towards Glanert’s future operatic career (which had already begun by this time), the baritone soloist may be matched but is never submerged by the brilliantly used large orchestra. An accomplished addition to the slowly growing song-symphony repertoire, the Second is as successful on its own terms as Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, Zemlinsky’s Lyrische Symphonie or Shostakovich’s 14th. The marvellous Third (1996, inspired by Roman Polanski’s film Macbeth), commissioned by the BBC, did not start life as a symphony. Instead, the composer was planning ‘a collection of objets trouvées’ but found that what he was writing was naturally symphonic. Its premiere at the 1996 BBC Proms cemented his reputation as the symphonic successor to Hartmann.

Glanert’s Third Symphony remains unrecorded, unlike many of his succeeding orchestral works, such as Theatrum bestiarum (2004-05) – the songs and dances (partly derived from the then still-in-progress opera Caligula) dedicated to Shostakovich and unveiled at the 2005 Proms. At one time available on Avie (1/08 – nla), Theatrum bestiarum was featured on the first of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s Horizon series in a marginally finer, more virtuosic account (11/08). Glanert was house composer for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra for six years from 2011, so many of his works feature on subsequent issues of the orchestra’s label: Fluss ohne Ufer (‘Shoreless River’, 2008, on Horizon Vol 4), the ‘adagio for large orchestra’ Insomnium (2009-10, Horizon Vol 5) and Frenesia (2013, Horizon Vol 6) – all of which remain commercially available.

Glanert’s chamber and instrumental music has, by and large, escaped the attentions of the recording studio; this is a shame, as there is much to enjoy here, whether his delightful Four Quartets for four double basses (1984, rev 1986, no links to TS Eliot) or the bizarre – and fun – fantasy for barrel organ Kleine Kuttel-Daddeldu-Musik (1997). His guitar fantasy Paralipomena (‘Seven pieces to a fairytale of Novalis’, 1994) was recorded for MDG by Ulf Gollnast (nla). It’s a delicately poetic, fantastical suite which should be in the repertoire of all players interested in contemporary music.

Many of Glanert’s works look, Janus-like, both back and forwards in time. For example, there are several Brahms-related ones such as his expanded version of Vier ernste Gesänge, punctuated by four original preludes and an epilogue (2004-05, rev 2010), and – subtitled ‘Musik mit Brahms’ – Weites Land (2013, rev 2014); and there is his splendid 2004 orchestral fantasy Argentum et aurum (‘Silver and Gold’), derived from Heinrich Isaac, or his magnificent reworking of Schubert’s Einsamkeit (2009). In these works, the boundaries between original composition and arrangement become often joyously blurred as Glanert celebrates the music of his predecessors. Yet every note is of his own time, especially in those operas based on historical characters, such as Joseph Süss (composed 1997-99), set in the 18th century; Caligula (2004-06, after Albert Camus’s play), set in first-century Rome; and most tellingly in the award-winning Der Spiegel des grossen Kaisers (‘The Mirror of the Great Emperor’, 1989-93), whose action – from Arnold Zweig’s novel – is fixed primarily in Palermo in 1235, the unnamed Emperor granted visions of the future, including the destruction of his imperial line and the Battle of Verdun in 1916. In Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung (‘Jest, Satire, Irony and Deeper Meaning’, 1999-2000), the Devil is stranded on an Earth hell-bent on self-destruction; set in an indeterminate time, its roots lie in past, present and future. Solaris (2010-12, based on Stanisław Lem’s novella rather than Andrei Tarkovsky’s film, and which boasts some remarkably acute choral writing) takes place in a time to come, aboard a space station orbiting a distant planet covered by a telepathic ocean which conjures up manifestations of the astronauts’ pasts to dominate their present.

Glanert’s operas range from his hour-long Thornton Wilder triple bill Drei Wasserspiele (‘Three Water Plays’, 1986-95) to the full-evening Caligula and Solaris. Purely musically, the unrecorded chamber opera-ballet Nijinskys Tagebuch (‘Nijinsky’s Diary’, 2007-08) bears leaner instrumental textures and a more advanced style that paradoxically evokes the avant-garde of the late 20th century. The one-act Das Holzschiff (‘The Wooden Ship’, 2008-10, based on the first part of Hans Henny Jahn’s Shoreless River trilogy), yet to find its way into recorded media, is richly illustrative of the sea and the principals’ emotional states, with an immediacy worthy of Korngold. Fortunately, Oceane (2016-18, after Theodor Fontane’s unfinished novella) has been recorded, and is arguably Glanert’s finest opera to date, even if Caligula remains my personal favourite. Oceane deals with the ancient legend of Melusine, the water nymph who tries to integrate into human society, find love and settle. Her wealth and erotically charged mannerisms prove alienating, so people turn against her, and despite the love of local landowner Martin, she returns to the sea. A compelling work, it won the Oper! Award in 2020-21.

Shortly before commencing work on Oceane, Glanert’s production of choral music for the concert hall reached its zenith with Requiem für Hieronymus Bosch (2015-16), an eighty-minute-long hybrid of liturgical Requiem and the seven deadly sins from the Carmina Burana – oratorio and opera – prompted by the imagined scenario of the painter’s post-mortem judgement. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s own-label recording of this piece has an over‑the‑top energy that I find captivating.

Much of Glanert’s work lies unrecorded, including his concertos, his remarkable orchestral fantasy Katafalk (1997) and the stone-cold masterpiece Prager Sinfonie: Lyrische Fragmente nach Franz Kafka (2019-20). This last – his fourth symphony, for mezzo-soprano, bass-baritone and orchestra – is on the scale of Das Lied von der Erde, and was premiered triumphantly in Prague in 2022 (having its UK premiere at London’s Barbican Hall a year later). Each of Glanert’s compositions is a discovery. His music, for all its use of familiar and traditional elements, is fundamentally new in every bar, and long may Glanert continue to produce it.

Recommended Recordings

Caligula

Ashley Holland bar Michaela Schuster mez Martin Wölfel ten Gregory Frank bass Frankfurt Opera / Markus Stenz (Oehms)

Based on Albert Camus’s play, this opera focuses on the emperor after the death of his sister–lover Drusilla. It explores Caligula’s growing obsession with death and his detachment from reality. Ashley Holland is magnificent in the title-role right from his opening scream, but the entire production is first-rate.

Read the Gramophone review

Vier Präludien und ernste Gesänge. Weites Land

Michael Nagy bar Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra / Olari Elts (Ondine)

Glanert has paid several musical tributes to composer forebears, none more telling than his orchestral resetting (2004-05, rev 2010) of Brahms’s Vier ernste Gesänge, punctuated by four original preludes and an epilogue, and Weites Land (2013, rev 2014), originally designed as a prelude to Brahms’s Symphony No 4 but perfectly understandable on its own terms.

Read the Gramophone review

Oceane

Maria Bengtsson sop Nikolai Schukoff ten Christoph Pohl bar Nicole Haslett sop Deutsche Oper Berlin / Donald Runnicles (Oehms)

As in the case of Caligula, this opera has a libretto by Hans-Ulrich Treichel, this one derived from Theodor Fontane’s unfinished novella ‘Oceane von Parceval’. From the haunting opening, Maria Bengtsson is utterly captivating as Oceane in this recording of the acclaimed 2019 premiere production.

Read the Gramophone review