Herbert Henck (1948-2025)

[pjme]

From the ECM website:

Herbert Henck, brilliant pianist, dedicated interpreter of modern music, and an insightful writer on contemporary composition, has  died, aged 76. His eight ECM New Series albums constitute a unique body of work.  In his performances, as in his musicological studies, Henck liked to cast light on overlooked or hidden aspects of the music. This quality of revelation illuminates each of his recordings, whether exploring the Zen playfulness of John Cage's piano music, the motoric drive of George Antheil and Conlon Nancarrow's pieces, the aphoristic – and forgotten – 12-tone works of Johann Ludwig Trepulka, or the shimmering stasis of Hans Otte's Das Buch der Klänge, which Jean-Luc Godard adopted as the soundtrack for his film De l'origine du XXIe siècle.

He leaves a very impressive legacy: Barraqué, Ives, Koechlin, Cage, Mossolov ...he was also a composer.

[T. D.]

RIP. My favorite Henck recording is (surprisingly) the Hans Otte.

[Iota]

This is very sad news indeed. His recording of all four books of Mompou's Música Callada  is my favourite, nobody captures their extraordinary stillness and magic like he does imo. RIP

[Louis]

Sad to hear.

Recently I was researching an obscure composer who was a student by Hauer in Vienna Johann Ludwig Trepulka (1903-1945).

Turned out there's only one CD of his works: Henck recorded his piano works. He also researched h Trepulka's life and made the information available on his website.

What Henck did for modern, often unknown composers, is hard to overstate.

[Mandryka]

This is very sad news indeed. His recording of all four books of Mompou's Música Callada  is my favourite, nobody captures their extraordinary stillness and magic like he does imo. RIP

That's what he does in Koechlin's Heures Persanes.

There's also a sense of spaciousness in his Music of Changes and indeed the Barraqué  sonata.


This is why his music making fitted in at ECM  I suppose. 

Henck had an excellent Soundcloud page, with transfers of some unpublished LPs - Walter Zimmermann's Beginner's Mind and Morton Feldman's Triadic Memories.

[Mandryka]

RIP. My favorite Henck recording is (surprisingly) the Hans Otte.

It's very good - the Buch der Klange on ECM