Sinfonia N. 6 : New Version 1994
Symphony No. 6 was created in the late 1960s, and was first performed in Havana on 26. November 1969 by the Cuban National Orchestra under my direction. This symphony reflects not only the excited atmosphere of awakening duringthose years but also my efforts to include in the composition the large number of new human and artistic stimuli that I experienced at that time. So the banjo starts to play a Vietnamese song of freedom (Stars in the Night), laterthe first bars of Mikis Theodorakis hymn of freedom is heard.The second movement is based on the poem Fe de erratas (errata sheet) by Miguel Barnet. In the original version, the three parts of the symphony mergewithoutinterruption. In the revised version, I separated them to make it easier for the audience to register the caesuras which are also internal caesuras as regards content. Apart from strengthening the string sound, the mostsignificant alternation in comparison to the first version is that I fully composed all of the aleatoric passages and pitches which originally were to be freely improvised as was the fashion at that time. Thus I wanted to freethem the realm of chance and indeterminacy and to bring them back into my artistic control.- Hans Werner Henze
