Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The year 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Paul Hindemith, one of the most important composers of the 20th century. It is for this reason that the German cellist Judith Ermert decided to record the repertory for cello and piano, too rarely played and recorded. With the Belgian pianist Daan Vandewalle, a specialist in avant-garde music, she embarks on a journey that explores all facets of Hindemith's artistic development, ranging from the post-Romantic language of the Three Pieces for cello and piano op.8 to his own rhythmic style, known as Motorik, which echoes the industrial era in the Sonata for solo cello op.25.

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) is without a doubt, one of the most revolutionary composers of the 20th Century. Among his achievements, completing a sonata for each of the orchestral instruments shows how versatile this composer was. As an acclaimed violist himself, he dedicated to the viola an extended part of his complex and unique composing literature. These four monumental sonatas for viola solo represent the backbone of the viola repertoire, which also demonstrates a synergy of compositional language rooted in the Baroque, representing the technical, structural and philosophical evolution of this German composer. Thirty-year-old Spanish violist Jesus Rodolfo Rodriguez is widely recognized for his performances, which combine the spontaneity and fearless imagination of youth with the discipline and precision of a mature artist. He has been praised by the New York Times, Digest, as "... Jesus Rodolfo is a start whose light transcends the stage...”, his authority over the most complex technical demands of the repertoire as well as for the depth of his musical insight made his stand among the top young musicians in the world.

• Three essential works for clarinet from Paul Hindemith, two of which are making their premiere Stoltzman-performed releases. • The foremost clarinetist in the world. Virtuosity, technique, imagination and communicative power sum up this legendary artist. • Pianist Yehudi Wyner is a former teacher of Richard Stoltzman and former student of Paul Hindemith. • Album Web Application includes interviews with Stoltzman and Wyner, study scores, liner notes, and more www.navonarecords.com/resolve

Classical Music

This set is available at a special price: 3 CDs for the price of 2.

The bulk of this second volume of CPO's Hindemith orchestral cycle, repackaged from earlier individual releases, explores his concerted works--which turn out to be quite a few, even though he did not always identify them as such. CD 1 offers the 1921 Film Music, which in the mocking grandiosity of its opening is curiously reminiscent of George Antheil. The bright coloring and frenzied pacing of Kammermusik No. 1 (1922) make it the most consistently arresting among the set of seven. Much calmer moods prevail in 1927's Five Pieces for String orchestra, to be followed by some not very interesting music composed in 1932 for the Plon Boarding School's music students. The disc ends with Hindemith's quaint arrangements of 16th-century French dances.


CD 2 begins with Hindemith's astringent Kammermusik No. 2 (1924) for piano and 12 Instruments, which features endlessly busy piano writing, flawlessly rendered by Siegried Mauser. Konzertmusik for Piano, Brass, and Harps of 1930 offers a far more reflective mood accented by the seductive sounds of the harp as well as some menacing brass interjections. CD 3 smartly collects Hindemith's three works for cello and orchestra, allowing for a broad overview of his compositional evolution: from the late-romantic surgings of the Op. 3 concerto of 1916, to the angular and dissonant Kammermusik No. 3 of 1925, to the brass-drenched, post-Mathis der Maler lyricism of the 1940 Cello Concerto. All three works are masterfully rendered by cellist David Geringas.


CD 4 returns Siegfried Mauser to center stage both for The Four Temperaments, Hindemith's coldly beautiful 1940 ballet for piano and strings, as well as the 1945 Piano Concerto, written in his wonderfully rich and sonorous late orchestra style, with a brilliantly virtuoso piano part to boot. Mauser, as before, excels in both works. CD 5 presents two more Hindemith ballets, both of which feature substantial solo parts for the piano. The early Der Dämon (1922) is striking in its heavy rhythmic emphasis and stern countenance. The greatest contrast imaginable comes with the serene opening strains of Hérodiade, composed in 1944 to Mallarmé's poem. Both the narrated and purely orchestral versions are presented here.


Werner Andreas Albert has fully absorbed Hindemith's unique orchestral style, and it shows in the remarkably consistent and idiomatic sound he draws from all three of the featured orchestras. While most of these works are available separately in competing recordings (such as Tortelier and the BBC Philharmonic's Four Temperaments and Cello Concerto, and Riccardo Chailly's brilliant and bracing Concertgebouw recording of the complete Kammermusik), this set allows for a more comprehensive overview at an attractive price. CPO's first-class sound naturally reflects the venue in question: brighter in Australia, bigger and more reverberant in Frankfurt. Hindemith fans have rarely been so fortunate. [5/6/2001]
--Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com

The second CD with Paul Hindemith’s string quartets - superbly interpreted by the renowned Juilliard String Quartet - has just been released. Samuel Rhodes writes in the liner notes of the CD: "My group, the Juilliard String Quartet, has been fascinated by the Hindemith quartets for some time. We are challenged by the depth of the musical content, the overflowing vitality, and the sophistication of compositional technique that exist in these works." German Record Critics' Award for the complete recording of Hindemith's string quartets by the Juilliard String Quartet! The CD was awarded the Quarterly German Record Critics' Award!

Paul Hindemith's works for piano have been completely released on CD now, with Siegfried Mauser as pianist. "Hindemith's Klaviermusik op. 37 shows the way", wrote Eberhard Preuner already in 1927, "strict thematic forms are combined with sweeping improvisational lines, melody is pitted against melody, everywhere you hear a style derived from pure chamber music." The individual movements of the "Tanzst�cke" op. 19 have clearly more the character of ballet music than that of a sequence of popular dances. Parallel fourths and sevenths clusters as well as parallel shifts of entire chords in the foreground are earmarks of Hindemith's textural technique in the early 1920s.

As if in slow motion, librettist Thornton Wilder summarizes a series of Christmas dinners celebrated by the Bayard family over a period of ninety years and fuses them into a single long meal. The concentration of the characters and their standardization are all things that Hindemith's setting picks up on: he counterbalanced them musically by means of development, individualization, and variation - thus designing a kind of music that expresses contingency - significant coincidence - as an attitude toward life. The view of what Wilder calls the "mill of time" is thus always a view of the future as well - whether we perceive that as misfortune or consolation or both at once.