Dr. Jerzy Kosmala, internationally acclaimed as a concert violist and pedagogue, has concertized throughout Europe, the former Soviet Union, Canada, North and South America, Asia, and South Africa, and has recordings on several record labels. He is a frequent guest artist and performer at the world's foremost festivals, international viola congresses, universities and academies, and is a permanent jury member of virtually all of the most prestigious international competitions, including the Lionel Tertis, Geneva, Munich, Markneukirchen, Trapani, Primrose Viola Competition, Brahms Viola Competition, and the Concert Artist Guild International Competition in New York City. In addition, Kosmala has adapted and published numerous compositions for viola and has premiered many contemporary works. A former member of the Kraków String Quartet and the renowned Eastman String Quartet, Kosmala is a former student of and assistant to the legendary William Primrose. Professor Emeritus at Louisiana State University, Jerzy Kosmala currently serves on the faculty of the University of California, Irvine, and was, for several decades, a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Dr. Jerzy Kosmala, internationally acclaimed as a concert violist and pedagogue, has concertized throughout Europe, the former Soviet Union, Canada, North and South America, Asia, and South Africa, and has recordings on several record labels. He is a frequent guest artist and performer at the world's foremost Festivals, International Viola Congresses, Universities and Academies, and is a permanent jury member of virtually all of the most prestigious international competitions, including the Lionel Tertis, Geneva, Munich, Markneukirchen, Trapani, Primrose Viola Competition, Brahms Viola Competition, and the Concert Artist Guild International Competition in New York City.

This album contains Hindemith's most popular orchestral works, including the Balanchine-choreographed Symphonic Metamorphosis, performed with lapidary precision and great empathy by Hyperion regulars the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Martyn Brabbins, who have proved themselves consummate interpreters of this composer. Countermanding his reputation a composer of grim, gritty music, this is Hindemith at his most genuinely enjoyable - as Gavin Plumley writes in his informative booklet notes, "Hindemith's music is both intelligible and intellectual, as entertaining as it is finely wrought."

This is the Hindemith so many listeners and commentators love to hate—earnest, workaday neo-classicism based on cardboard harmonic progressions and squared-off rhythms, conveyorbelted via an apparently inexhaustible supply of wrong-note marches, sicilianos and pastorales. And yet these sonatas can be great fun to play, and when the players are masters of their instruments they are fun to listen to as well. Moreover, when the accompaniments are in the hands of a recreative personality as strong as Glenn Gould's they assume an entirely new and unexpected range of character.

Gould's fundamental insight into Hindemith's world was his identification of its "true amalgam of ecstasy and reason". These were the very qualities which fused in Gould's own artistic make-up, and it should not be surprising that his empathy with Hindemith is strong. Only in a rare eccentricity of tempo (such as the dead slow opening to •the finale of the Trumpet Sonata) or in a tendency to peck at lines marked with slurs (in the finale of the Tuba Sonata at a point actually marked molto legato) does the perverse side of his nature assert itself; and even here the sensation of intense commitment overrides all. The added vocals are of course something that every Gould-listener has to learn to take in their stride.

The soloists were members of the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble and all thoroughly distinguished musicians. Hornists could no doubt fault Mason Jones's steadiness of tone and intonation, particularly in the Alto Horn Sonata. Otherwise the playing is consistently well-focused and alert (Hindemith gives the tubist an especially severe examination in rhythmical awareness).

As with other issues in this series, the recordings (from 1976) are clear and forward, though instrumental perspectives do appear to vary slightly from sonata to sonata. It does seem a pity, though, that Sony Classical did not include Gould's accounts of the three piano sonatas in this set, rather than issuing them separately (they would still have fitted onto the two discs).

-- Gramophone [3/1993]

Hindemith's seven string quartets were produced in different phases of his compositional development, all reflecting the experience of being a distinguished and experienced string player. Influenced both by Brahmsian late-Romanticism and by the catastrophic events of the First World War, the imaginative String Quartet No. 1 reflects his concern to extend but honor traditional forms. Cast in the form of a suite, the by turns tempestuous and beautiful String Quartet No. 4 remains Hindemith's most popular and performed quartet. This is the third and final volume of a highly acclaimed cycle. 'As with the previous release in this series, the performances are all outstanding.

Hindemith: Chamber Music, Composer Paul Hindemith, Artist Valerius Ensemble, Format 1 CD, Paul Hindemith, considered the foremost German composer of his generation, believed in a strong link between music and social needs, and regarded the composer as a craftsman; someone who could provide for those needs. His chamber music is renowned for being unconventional and eclectic; the composer often experimented with a variety of styles and combinations of instruments. The Trio Op.47 uses the heckelphone, a baritone oboe used in several of the works of Richard Strauss. Op.47 is particularly notable for the atmospheric Arioso for this rare instrument. Unusual instrumentation is also found in the Clarinet Quintet, thanks to the appearance of the E flat clarinet in the central movement, leading the ensemble through a series of waltzes and a fugue of considerable length. The Kleinerkammermusik Op.24 No.2 is one of the composer's best-loved works, showcasing his humorous side through the use of playful dissonance. Our collection ends with the lyrical beauty of his famous Sonata for Trumpet and Piano. The Valerius Ensemble enjoys a successful calendar of performances in concert halls and for radio and television, having toured throughout the Netherlands, Spain and Brazil. With a special interest in contemporary music, the ensemble has had several works written especially for it, by composers such as Carlos Míchans and Leo Samama. In celebration of the Hindemith-year 2013 (50 years after his death in 1963) this recording presents a generous selection of his chamber music output. Written for a wide variety of instruments (heckelphone, flute, horn, clarinet, oboe, trumpet, violin, viola, piano) it represents Hindemith's eclectic, witty and vibrant style, in which neo-classical, expressionistic and jazzy elements fuse together in a very personal way. High caliber performances by Netherland's best instrumentalists, evidently enjoying this fascinating and intriguing music.

Paul Hindemith's compositions for a cappella choir are distinguished by a richness of expression and mood manifested in various compositional techniques and artistic forms. Again and again in his writings and textbooks, Hindemith emphasized the important role of the singing voice as a natural instrument for the composer-in-the-making to test his compositional sketches as well as for the layperson and music lover for spontaneous singing and music making. The CD presents choral compositions on texts by Bertolt Brecht, Gottfried Benn, Walt Whitman, Fitz-James O'Brien, medieval and self-composed texts. Both dramatic and humorous, light tones in these choral works show the breadth of Hindemith's skillfulness. The CD was awarded the Quarterly German Record Critics' Award and the "Echo Klassik 2001" (best choral-work recording)!

This is a rather rare and special disc. Rare, because as far as I can tell this is the first recording in the original English language of this late Hindemith opera and special because it is very good.

Hindemith conducted the first English performance of the opera at the Juilliard School in New York just nine months before his death in December 1963. For the libretto he persuaded Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) to collaborate with him in adapting his own one-act play of the same name that he had written thirty years previously. Wilder remains a cornerstone of the American literary and theatrical establishment but was notoriously unwilling to allow his works to be used for alternative theatrical or musical use. Hence although The Matchmaker did make it to the stage as Jerry Herman's Hello Dolly, he refused permission for his most famous works; Our Town and The Skin of our Teeth. The latter was mooted as a musical by Bernstein - which the author accepted - but when that venture collapsed he rejected Bernstein's further approach to make it an opera. According to the liner written by Tappan Wilder - Wilder's nephew and literary executor - he was extremely well versed in music in general and opera in particular as well as many languages. Skills, one imagines, that must help the collaborative process between composer and librettist a lot.

The dramatic conceit behind this highly compressed work is essentially a simple one. The drama is presented in a single fluid sequence of Christmas dinners in one household over a period of ninety years. There is no significance with it being Christmas except that it is a day that brings families together so the audience witnesses the succeeding generations in the same setting. Apparently Orson Welles credited the original play as the inspiration behind the famous 'breakfast-montage' sequence in Citizen Kane where the audience witnesses the changing/decaying relationship between Kane and his first wife. Hindemith writes in a similarly fluid style - there is little division between scenes. He uses recurring motifs to signify the passing years. Wilder's libretto revisits moments of perfunctory conversation that will be familiar to every family; "how many years have we lived here?", "you were missed at church today", "I remember when ..." With such conversational text it comes as no surprise that Hindemith writes in an arioso/recitative style - this reminded me in technique if not style of that used by Vaughan Williams in his equally compact and dramatically potent Riders to the Sea. There are few if any arias or indeed ensembles. That being said a highlight of the score is a dramatically moving and technically brilliant sextet where Sam, one of the central family's sons is on leave from the army. He tells his family to act exactly as normal so he has memories to treasure and over their prattling inconsequential small talk he sings a touching counter-melody chorale-like song; "I will hold this tight! I shall remember you!"

To give some sense of the dramatic compression at work: Sam exits; "and so good-bye", the next line of the text laments his death in the war "He was only a boy, a mere boy ... What can we do ... only time can help " and the line following that has moved the plot forward by some years and introduces another character on another Christmas day. Memory, memorial and how we live through the actions and memories of our relatives past and future lie at the heart of this work. The house is the unchanging focal point - although the closing line of the work is "And they're building a new house" but it is the lives of the inhabitants of the house that count.

Not because the text is convoluted or opaque this is an opera that requires considerable concentration if you are not quite literally to lose the plot. Fortunately the entire libretto - in English and Hindemith's own German translation - is included. Layers of potential confusion are added by the fact that - as with many families - certain names are passed down hence we have two Lucias and two Rodericks. Even more confusion comes from the fact that the same singer sings both Lucias and another sings two different roles. Seen live, this might be clear through transitions of costume or setting - with only the ear to guide — blink (in an auditory sense) and you will have dropped a decade. My sole observation with this as a piece of theatre is, I wonder if the compression prevents the audience becoming engaged with any individual character - they simply do not inhabit the stage long enough. That being said, Wilder's drawing of character is so searching and well-observed that I think most of us would recognise personality types and scenarios from our own experience that give weight and resonance to these precisely-drawn sketches.

Hindemith makes no attempt to place the music in time or place. Just the opposite in fact - his chamber orchestra includes a rather anachronistic harpsichord. This was surely the right decision - with such an express journey over the best part of a century it would end up a patch-work of pastiche. Neither does he make any particular significance of it being Christmas except for the work's brief Prelude//Introduction which is a rather curdled and harmonically dense take on "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" - which is about as un-merry as it is possible to imagine. In the essay accompanying the disc by Joel Haney he describes the work as one "which ponders the experience of time as a condition of human possibility and limitation -'the bright and the dark' - through the rise and decline of an American bourgeois family". The brilliance of both authors lies in the way they tie this sense of continuity across time - Hindemith's is a slightly subtler skill because he uses fragments of melody and motif which burrow into the subconscious so by the second or third listen the ear begins to pick up on the connections the music is making with recurring characters situations or text. Hence, this is the work of a master-craftsman. As so often, I find the accusation of Hindemith being a dry or dusty composer wholly without justification. No, he does not write big arching overtly emotional melodies. Rather he points to subtler, more 'real' scenarios which have resonance and truth for the engaged audience member.

So to this performance; Leon Botstein and his American Symphony Orchestra clearly thrive on the discovery and performance of little-known and under-appreciated works. In the past with some of the grander-scale and overtly Romantic works I have found Botstein's approach to be a degree clinical and unwilling to unbutton. Here the precision and measured emotion of Hindemith's score seems to chime perfectly with his aesthetic. This is a recording of a single live performance which given the ensemble complexities and unfamiliarity of the piece is remarkably good. There is no audible audience noise - my only sorrow is that the hall ambience is cut off very quickly at the end of the work - to preclude applause one supposes. The orchestra play very well - the engineering places the instruments quite closely behind the voices which occasionally obscures the text. All of the singers are of a very high standard and fortunately most of the text is sung with commendable clarity. Of particular brilliance is the beautifully light and clear singing of Kathryn Guthrie as Leonora. Indeed the entire cast are excellent both in ensemble and individually. None make any attempt to 'age' their voices with their characters - something perhaps an actor in the original theatrical version might.

Bridge present this single CD in a double CD case - presumably to allow for the thicker than usual liner/libretto. As well as the text the liner includes the usual performer biographies as well as two useful essays about the work. The disc runs for less than fifty minutes but so concentrated and complete in itself is the work that a filler would seem inappropriate and unnecessary. A fascinating and rather moving work. It reveals Hindemith and Wilder as masters of the slow-burn potent theatrical experience which lingers in the memory for the power of its insight into the human condition.

-- Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International

Born in Hanau near Frankfurt-am-Main in 1895, where he was something of a musical prodigy, Hindemith entered Hoch’sche Konservatorium where he studied violin, composition and conducting. He supported himself by playing in local dance bands and theatre groups. He soon made his mark as a performer and became deputy leader of the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra at the age of nineteen, becoming its leader three years later.

His early compositional style earned him the reputation of something of an enfant térrible. Whilst his music is modernist in outlook, he rejected some of the modern trends in music, including the teachings of Schoenberg, who he admired, in favour of a more individualistic outlook. In 1921 he had his String Quartet Op. 16 and his Kammermusik No. 1 performed at the Donaueschingen festival of contemporary music. This was followed by further performances of his music the following year at the International Society of Contemporary Music festival which served to bring Hindemith and his music to the attention of a wider audience.

The music presented on these two CDs seems to have been performed as part of the centenary celebrations of Hindemith’s birth during the 1995 Schwetzingen Festival. This is a well planned and executed concert which brings together two of his better known pieces with two of his less well known theatrical works.

Der Dämon or "The Demon" is described as "A Dance-Pantomime" and is set in two scenes, revolving around the said Demon's seduction of two sisters. In the first scene he seduces the first sister, leading the second sister into a Dance of Grief and Longing. The second scene deals with the second sister's advances towards the Demon and his rejection of her. I really enjoyed this performance. This is a work known for its more jazzy elements, and the Ensemble Varianti highlight this aspect far more than the Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt under Werner Andreas Albert on CPO (999 220-2) whose performance is more symphonic.

The Kammermusik No. 2 is in reality a mini piano concerto and marks the first in a six-part series of solo concertos which Hindemith completed in 1927. It has a highly virtuosic obbligato piano part and is in itself quite dramatic; it is believed that Hindemith composed his The Four Temperaments in order to stop George Balanchine re-working the Kammermusik No. 2 as a ballet presentation.

Herodiade which is a Ballet – Orchestral Recitation after Mallarmé, is the latest work presented here and displays greater maturity. It is available in two versions, one with recitation, and one purely orchestral. The one presented here has the wonderful Gisela Zach-Westphal whose declamation is far more dramatic than Ann Gicquel for Albert on CPO (999 220-2), although I do prefer his more orchestral sound and he does present both versions.

The final work on the disc is a spirited performance of the Kammermusik No. 1 with its famous finale entitled 1921 and siren-call ending. This was the piece that really announced Hindemith on the world-stage. Both of the Kammermusiks are given performances here that bring out the chamber music aspect more than in the other versions I have, Albert on CPO (999 301-2, 999 138-2) and Chailly on Decca (473 722-2). Even so, each version has a lot to offer.

These four works all have a significant role for the piano and here Florian Henschel is on top form, especially when you take into account that he was a late replacement for Sviatoslav Richter. His playing is strong and impassioned and he seems to make light of some fiendish sounding piano writing. As mentioned above, the Ensemble Varianti are excellent and really bring out the different colours in the music. As for Gisela Zach-Westphal she makes this disc worth buying just for her part in Herodiade. Whilst I knew that Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau also liked to dabble in conducting, especially towards the end of his singing career, this is the first disc I have of him in this role. He manages to keep a tight control on his forces whilst not losing any excitement from the music. First rate performances.

The sound is clearly from a live event; you get the applause and one or two coughs. There is also a slight string twang that I am sure is not in the score. Despites this, these are performances that are full of thrilling and energetic playing. I would have loved to have attended this concert. The booklet essay is exemplary; it is detailed and informative and fills in a couple of blanks in my knowledge of this composer.

– MusicWeb International (Stuart Sillitoe)