Only four years separate The Bassarids from El Cimarron yet the gulf between their respective musical styles is immense. It was immediately after the composition of The Bassarids that Henze began his search for a style that would give musical expression to his political (Marxist) inclinations; the result was a swing toward the more avant-garde tendencies practised by many of his contemporaries. One of the first pieces to emerge from this period was his ill-fated oratorio Das Floss der 'Medusa' (''The Raft of 'Medusa'''), but it was in El Cimarron that Henze took his newfound style to its most extreme.
Based on The Biography of the Runaway Slave Estaban Montejo by the Cuban author Miguel Barnet, it uses baritone, flute, guitar and percussion to portray the experiences and struggles of a Cuban slave turned revolutionary. Much of the score is aleatoric in nature, allowing the performers a degree of latitude as to which direction the music will take; Henze's reasoning being that the spontaneity and immediacy emanating from the performers ultimately breaks down the barrier between audience and composer—in the words of Henze ''to bring [the listener] to the point where he has the feeling that he could do this for himself''. Whether Henze is successful in this aspect is open to question—to my ears much of the resulting music has a somewhat dated feel, despite passages where one can hear the unmistakable fingerprints of Henze's individual voice.
Of course there will be many for whom the work still has an irresistible appeal (it is regarded as something of a classic in Henze's output) and for those this new recording will not be a disappointment. Paul Yoder's virtuosic performance as the Cimarron cannot be faulted, and Michael Faust, Reinbert Evers and Mircea Ardeleanu provide an equally mind-boggling display of virtuosity as they negotiate a multitudinous array of percussion instruments and flutes. The Koch/Radio Bremen recording is first-class.'