Hans Werner Henze‘s complete cycle, Royal Winter Music: 2 Sonatas based on Shakespearean Characters (1976,1979) David Tanenbaum’s second recording of this piece.

…David Tanenbaum [is] a most mercurial guitarist, capable of great stylistic control of color, mood and voice. In a De Visee suite, Tanenbaum managed to coax a wonderfully dry and delicate baroque sound from a modern instrument. This set was also admirable in that it in no way presented these as “potted pieces,” but gave a fair sense of graceful strumming that a royal court could (and no doubt did) gavotte to.

A far different court is evoked by Hans Werner Henze’s Royal Winter Music.. In David Tanenbaum’s hands, the two excerpts presented were far more approachable than is commonly the case. True, his spoken set-up of each was fine..he is a surprisingly good reader and beautifully recited , from memory, the opening monologue of Richard III (•••Now is the winter of our discontent…). After such a preamble, the emotive intent of the music followed clearly and logically. As per Henze’s instructions, he gave his Daniel Friederich guitar quite a shellacking, but Friederich being French, after all, who can say Richard III wouldn’t have done as much and more?’Mark Greenberg, NyLON Review, Winter 2005 (review of March 25, 2005 concert)

Some months after he died a guitar trio was found in Lou Harrison’s papers called Elegy for Harpo Marx, composed in 1964. The history of the piece is unclear but the version found was certainly written for guitar. Tanenbaum performed (premiered?) the work at the San Francisco Conservatory November 7, 2004 with Brian Dowdy and Rodrigo Placencia, and they recorded the work Nov. 25 for Mode Records.

The long awaited recording of John Adams‘ Naive and Sentimental Music, featuring David Tanenbaum as guitar soloist with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, was released July 30, 2002 by Nonesuch. Mark Swed, in the Los Angeles Times, writes of

‘The gorgeous solo guitar melody (elegantly played by David Tanenbaum) that haunts the central slow movement.’

The cd was nominated for a Grammy in 2003.

Tanenbaum performed the Vivaldi D Major concerto with John Adams conducting on May 11 at the Dean Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, California. Tanenbaum performed Naive and Sentimental Music with the San Francisco Symphony October 20-24, 2004