The final volume of Paul Hindemith’s(1895–1963) youthful and fresh Kammermusik series from the 1920s includes Kammermusik Nos. 4–7 performed by Kronberg Academy Soloists and the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra under a true Hindemith specialist, Christoph Eschenbach, who has won a Grammy for a previous Hindemith album on Ondine.

These four works by Hindemith can be considered as full-bodied concertos for violin, viola, viola d’amore and organ. These work feature four young talented soloists, Stephen Waarts, Rimothy Ridout, Ziyu Shenand Christian Schmitt. Hindemith’s Kammermusik No. 4 (‘Violin Concerto’) is scored for a larger orchestra than its three predecessors and includes 24 instrumentalists. Kammermusik No. 5 (‘Viola Concerto’) the composer premiered himself by playing the solo part. In total, Hindemith performed this work for 85 times during the next 11 years! In a letter, Hindemith described the viola d’amore as “the most beautiful thing that you can imagine in sound”. The composer fell in love with the instrument and wrote his Kammermusik No. 6 with this instrument in mind. Hindemith’s final Kammermusik (No. 7) was written to a commission by the Southwest German Radio: the premiere of this Organ Concerto was transmitted live in 1928. The radio broadcast had a decisive role in the composer’s choice of instrumentation.

REVIEWS:

As in Vol 1, Eschenbach relishes the music’s wild iconoclasm. Tempos are again lively and throughout he draws marvellous playing from the Kronberg Academy strings and Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra’s winds (the trumpet not least!) and percussion.

– Gramophone

Have I mentioned that these are some of Hindemith’s most wonderful pieces? They combine the brash gestures of his early, avant-garde period with the serious, neo-Baroque elements of his later music—one can hear him changing from 1922 to 1927 in these seven pieces—several of the slow movements approach the meditative depths of his “Mathis der Maler” Symphony. I still recommend the Chailly set as a first choice, but Hindemith fanciers will want this one too.

– Fanfare

Sharon Kam discovers Hindemith on her third album on Orfeo label. Even if some people still consider him “too modern” today, Hanau-born Hesse Paul Hindemith is undoubtedly one of the most influential German composers of the generation after Richard Strauss. Few of his immediate colleagues have found their way into the international repertoire to the same extent that he has, or influenced subsequent generations through comparably extensive educational work. All three works for clarinet featured on this recording date from years of extensive travel: the Quartet for Clarinet, Violin, Cello, and Piano was written in 1938 around the time of his emigration to Switzerland, the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano in 1939 during the course of the tours of the USA that immediately followed the emigration, and finally, the Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in 1947 (written for and premiered by Benny Goodman) when Hindemith left his American exile to visit Europe again for the first time after the Second World War. Sharon Kam has teamed up with her long-standing musical partners Enrico Pace , Antje Weithaas , and Julian Steckel for the chamber music part of the album, and with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony under the musical direction of Daniel Cohen for the clarinet concerto.

The saxophone is a synonym for rich timbre and a wide range of expressive possibilities, but despite its highly attractive features, the instrument was a late addition to the classical orchestra. Seen in this light, the work by the saxophone quartet clair-obscur which devotes itself intensively to classical works for saxophone takes on a particular significance. The ensemble's repertoire is seemingly inexhaustible. From adventurous arrangements of piano music to string quartet, there is nothing the musicians leave untried. They employ their instruments to bring to life a myriad of different tonal colours and musical genres. Paul Hindemith is the focus of this album: :during the 1920's, he became enchanted by the tone of the saxophone, integrating it on a number of occasions into the scores of his stage works. The ensemble clair-obscur has a special interest in his chamber music, for example the Sonata for four horns and the composition ''Frankenstein's Monstre Repertoire'' for string quartet. These works alongside the other compositions featured on this album have been specially arranged for this saxophone ensemble production by Christoph Enzel.

Using the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Hindemith first completed Das Marienleben (The Life of Mary) in 1923 and it occupies a key position in his output, marking a transition from avant garde Expressionism to his mature neo-classical style. He regarded the cycle as "the best thing I have yet written", an affection retained through painstaking revisions over subsequent years. Hindemith responded to Rilke's imagery with truly moving music that ranges from tenderness and hushed emotion to sweeping dramatic power, the 1948 version transforming his youthful songs into "an organic masterpiece ranking with the great song-cycles".

"The performances on these discs have one thing in common: they are almost shockingly direct, so that one hears the mind of the composer Hindemith working behind every note. Anyone used to the readings of Mozart’s K.428 and Beethoven’s Op. 96 by, say, the Busch or Smetana Quartets may feel a lack of colour and nuance here. ..And yet, if the listener is patient, much will be gained by attending carefully to this no-frills approach." (Tully Potter)

Ondine's successful Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) recordings with the NDR Sinfonieorchester conducted by Christoph Eschenbach continue with another release featuring two major symphonic works by the composer: Symphonie ‘Mathis der Maler' and Symphonie in E-flat.

The orchestra's and Christoph Eschenbach's previous Hindemith release together with Midori won a Grammy Award in 2014.

The ‘Mathis der Maler' Symphony is based on an opera that treats the life of the Renaissance painter Mathias Grünewald. Hindemith started to work on the symphony already prior to the completion of the opera. The symphony was premiered with great success by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Wilhelm Furtwängler on 12 March 1934. This performance was the last premiere of an orchestral work by Hindemith in Germany before the National Socialist regime issued a general performance prohibition applying to his works in 1936.

Hindemith wrote his Symphonie in E-flat during his exile in the United States in 1940. The Symphony is absolute music in the tradition of the four-movement symphony of Beethoven and the romantic period.

REVIEW:

Eschenbach’s trademark fondness for textural warmth and clarity is much to the fore in Mathis, where strings and woodwind are admirably numinous, the complex counterpoint in both the ‘Engelkonzert’ and the ‘Temptation’ beautifully detailed. The central ‘Grablegung’ is slow, rich-sounding and very introverted. The state-of-the-art recording, pristine and wide-ranging but with no sense of dynamic exaggeration, helps him at the big climaxes, which are imposing, at times even monumental, and there’s a beguiling elegance to the instrumental solos that thread their way through the textures. Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic on DG have more dramatic bite but this is superbly done nevertheless.

Eschenbach’s approach to the underrated Symphony in E flat, meanwhile, is epic, thoughtful and at times startlingly measured. He is wonderfully attuned to the complex trajectory of a work that looks back from a newly acquired place of safety on an old world irrevocably damaged. The opening Sehr lebhaft has terrific élan, the scherzo a supple, gracious wit. The orchestral clarity is again breathtaking. But placed beside the almost reckless energy of Bernstein (Sony—nla) or Hindemith himself (DG), you notice a grander manner and slower speeds. Eschenbach’s longbreathed way with the crucial Sehr langsam steers it closer to ritual mourning than private grief, though his treatment of the work’s closing pages, in which sadness briefly threatens to intrude upon gathering joy, is moving in the extreme.

-- Gramophone

Mathis der Maler is the central composition of Paul Hindemith’s output for music theater. The reception began with its successful premiere of a symphony of three orchestral parts from the opera, in March of 1934 in Berlin. That was still before the composer was attacked in the National-Socialist press which prompted a defense of Furtwängler’s in a newspaper article titled “The Hindemith Case”. The opera wasn’t premiered until May 1938, in Zurich, where the Hindemith’s had emigrated to, before moving on to the United States. Much as Mathis, who found his political engagement in the Peasant’s War and his calling to paint solely for the glory of God to collide with the expectation to positions himself on religious matters during the Reformation, Hindemith found himself torn between his refusal to propagate for the Nazis, his urge to follow his inner voice, and the demand that he position himself against the regime. These highly acclaimed performances from 2012 at Theater an der Wien with Opera Star Roland Koch in the title role is finally now available as an album release.

REVIEW:

Hindemith wrote his own libretto for Mathis, an exploration of the clash between artists’ responsibility to their art and to the social and political issues of their time. The production is full of telling detail, with the climactic fourth scene depicting the Peasants’ Revolt itself, and Mathis’s vision in the sixth especially vivid. All the protagonists are portrayed with touching truthfulness too. Wolfgang Koch is the conflicted, all-too-human painter, Kurt Streit the cardinal Albrecht von Brandenburg, Franz Grundheber the Protestant Riedlinger and Manuela Uhl his daughter Ursula, with whom Mathis is in love. It’s superbly conducted by Bertrand de Billy, making the most of the opera’s visionary moments, and doing his best with its occasional longueurs.

– Guardian (UK)

Paul Hindemith’s life was dominated by the events of the two world wars. In 1917, his discovery of contemporary Expressionist poetry and drama transformed him from a talented student to Germany’s leading new composer. His one-act operas Sancta Susanna and Das Nusch-Nuschi date from this period. Sancta Susanna – Hindemith’s first masterpiece – combines religious and erotic symbolism into an eerie narrative that was shocking for its time, whereas the dance suite from Das Nusch-Nuschi emphasises the plot’s origin as a Burmese comedy. The three symphonic movements from the opera Mathis der Maler refer to the three panels of the Isenheim Altarpiece by Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald, but also graphically reflect Hindemith’s own artistic struggles in Nazi Germany.

This project tells of European-American musical exchange at the beginning of the 20th century, the golden era of the transatlantic liners. Through concert tours and emigrations, the chosen composers toured and emigrated across the Atlantic, experiencing foreign impressions and recalling traditional themes. They were inspired by folk music, poetry to blues. I present these facets in original and arranged works for harp. “In the Atlantic crossings and the mutual influences of European and American composers, I felt my own family history with changing migration across the ocean.” (Anne-Sophie Bertrand)