BR-KLASSIK presents the live recording of a concert performance of Hindemith's opera "Cardillac" from the Prinzregententheater in Munich on October 13, 2013, in memory of the great conductor Stefan Soltész. Soltész died unexpectedly on July 22, 2022 - exactly one year ago - after collapsing while conducting Richard Strauss' "Die schweigsame Frau" at the Munich National Theatre. The Hungarian-born Austrian conductor was General Music Director of the Essen Philharmonic and Artistic Director of the Essen Aalto Music Theatre from 1997 to 2013. Both institutions were decisively shaped by him and received several awards during his era. He was a welcome guest conductor with the orchestras in Munich. In addition to the standard works from Mozart to Strauss, an important focus of his opera repertoire was Classical modernism.

Paul Hindemith's three-act opera "Cardillac", composed in 1925/26, was the composer's long-awaited first full-length stage work, and was based on E. T. A. Hoffmann's novella "Das Fräulein von Scuderi". Hindemith’s librettist Ferdinand Lion created a large-scale opera that focused primarily on the goldsmith Cardillac and on the madness that leads him to murder. Any logically structured plot was replaced by individual, self-contained scenes, resembling isolated snapshots. The premiere took place on November 9, 1926 at the Dresden State Opera under the baton of Fritz Busch, who thus spectacularly continued his series of important world premieres. Although the opera's radical style was perceived as highly unusual, it was nevertheless well received. After 1933, the work disappeared from German-language repertoires, but it promptly returned in 1946. Hindemith undertook a fundamental revision, and it was premiered in Zurich in 1952 - combined with a performance ban on the first version. As early as 1960, however, the release of the 1926 version was achieved – and it went on to supplant its revised version almost completely. This recording also features the original, first version of the opera.