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CHAN 9903 Front.qxd 17/7/07 2:06 pm Page 1 CHAN 9903 CHANDOS CHAN 9903 BOOK.qxd 17/7/07 2:07 pm Page 2 Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) Concert Music for Strings and Brass, Op. 50 16:20 AKG 1 1 First Part. Mäßig schnell, mit Kraft – Sehr breit, aber stets fließend 8:16 2 2 Second Part. Lebhaft – Langsam – Im ersten Zeitmaß 8:04 Concerto for Violin and Orchestra* 27:29 3 1 Mäßig bewegte Halbe 9:07 4 2 Langsam 8:45 5 3 Lebhaft 9:34 Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber 19:35 for large orchestra 6 1 Allegro 3:51 7 2 Turandot, Scherzo. Moderato – Lebhaft 7:13 8 3 Andantino 4:07 9 4 Marsch 4:19 TT 63:32 Leonidas Kavakos violin* Paul Hindemith BBC Philharmonic Yuri Torchinsky leader Yan Pascal Tortelier 3 CHAN 9903 BOOK.qxd 17/7/07 2:07 pm Page 4 of structure, to the oratorio Das Unaufhörliche emotional, indeed frankly passionate, of Hindemith: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra etc. (1931), the Mathis der Maler Symphony (1933) Hindemith’s later compositions. Like its and the opera of the same name (1934–5). near-contemporaries, the Cello Concerto and The Concert Music opens with tremendous Symphony in E flat, it breathes a spirit of anger, Throughout the 1920s Paul Hindemith was tended towards larger forces and performance force: a massed call to attention on the brass, tension and supercharged energy. We may associated with an aggressively unsentimental in less intimate surroundings than the against flamboyant coups d’archet and easily relate it to the period of its composition: variety of neoclassicism, one that returned to Kammermusiken. Nevertheless they all embody French-overture-like dotted rhythms in the one of personal upheaval for the composer, in the baroque idea of music as a craft, supplied features of the baroque concerto grosso strings. The two bodies then unite in a the opening months of a new World War. In for practical purposes. The ultimate genre, with clear interplay between pounding, exuberant, march-like music, with Germany his music was banned; and though he development of this attitude was ‘concertino’ and ‘ripieno’ groups. substantial sections featuring one or the other had intended the concerto for the German Gebrauchsmusik, ‘music for everyday use’. In That last element is especially evident in ‘choir’. A contrastingly severe, stately movement violinist Georg Kulenkampff, in the event the the following decade, however, Hindemith felt Concert Music for Strings and Brass, with its follows: massed strings in unison, later joined premiere was given in Amsterdam by Ferdinand the urge to compose music of strong sonorous antiphony of contrasting instrumental by horns, declaim a broad, passionate melody, Helmann and the Concertgebouw Orchestra expressive content, reasserting traditional choirs. It was the last composition to which like a gigantic recitative, while the heavy brass under Willem Mengelberg on 14 March 1940, humane values in an age increasingly Hindemith assigned an opus number and punctuate with forceful, wide-spaced chords. just two months before The Netherlands fell to dominated by totalitarianism. The three works stands at the very centre of his career. In one An effervescent fugato begins the second Nazi invasion. Hindemith was already aboard a on this disc exemplify this change of stance. sense it is the culmination of his works of the half of the work: a finale in scherzo-and-trio ship heading for the USA. Concert Music for Strings and Brass, 1920s, displaying hard-won mastery of the form. The fugato provides headlong He had begun his career as a violinist, and Op. 50, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky craft of composition and countering the excitement and high spirits in the outer performed Beethoven’s concerto in public for the fiftieth anniversary season of the emotional self-indulgence of late-Romantic and sections while the central trio proves to be an when still a teenager. So his one ‘big’ violin Boston Symphony Orchestra, was completed expressionist styles with the ‘objective’ extended slow movement with some of the concerto (unlike the ‘little’ one among the in Berlin on 27 December 1930. It concludes disciplines of clear form and neo-baroque most profound and poetic music that Kammermusik concertos) exploits to the full the group of works which Hindemith called counterpoint. But it is also, in spirit, his first Hindemith had yet composed. Here a ghostly the instrument’s grandest manner. One point Konzertmusik (Concert Music), reflecting his work of the 1930s. For all the ‘abstraction’ of quartet of muted horns introduces a long and of resemblance with Beethoven’s concerto is mid-1920s preference for austere, abstract, its title and forms, this Concert Music packs a shapely melodic meditation, mainly carried by that Hindemith’s, too, begins with a timpani utilitarian-sounding designations. Unlike his mighty expressive punch. Behind the two large the strings. With the return of the fugato the solo: a tense, irregular heartbeat-figure that more numerous group of Kammermusiken, movements we can descry the lineaments of a piece draws to a close in a jubilant display of grows beyond the bar line, over which the essentially a numbered series of concertos for highly compressed four-movement symphony. instrumental virtuosity. violin immediately presents the intense, solo instruments with accompanying chamber Thus it stands at the beginning of Hindemith’s By the time Hindemith came to compose his songful first theme. The mood is serious, with ensembles of varying constitutions, the reconciliation with nineteenth-century forms Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in late sudden bursts of mercurial energy. A certain Konzertmusik works were not individually and ideals which would swiftly lead, with 1939 he was an exile from Nazi Germany, living calm is associated with the second subject, numbered and were diverse in nature but increasing melodic warmth and expansiveness in Switzerland. This is one of the most directly but its air of unconstrained lyricism never 4 5 CHAN 9903 BOOK.qxd 17/7/07 2:07 pm Page 6 quite manages to dominate the proceedings. to the concerto’s only cadenza, principally Weber’s themes to new keys, Hindemith treats starting in a mood of comic excitement, grows The development begins with a harsh, based on this Romantic theme. Chuckling them entirely in his own mature manner, increasingly triumphant as the movement militaristic orchestral tutti. In the recapitulation woodwind ushers in a compressed reshaping their contours, putting them proceeds and, together with the fanfares, the two main themes enter into a peaceful recapitulation of the Lebhaft music and through modulations and tricking them out brings affairs to an end in decisive and dialogue with each other before a lively coda triumphant brass fanfares propel the with species of counterpoint unheard of in swaggering style. brings the movement to a defiant close. movement into a brilliant, decisive coda. Weber’s time, to produce a largely Grave woodwind harmony opens the slow While composing this concerto Hindemith good-humoured orchestral showpiece. © 2001 Calum MacDonald movement. It also introduces an uneasy, was discussing ballet projects with the The ‘Turandot Scherzo’ goes further in this signal-like repeated-note figure. The violin choreographer Leonid Massine, one of which direction, as it does in fantasy and stylistic Born in Athens, Leonidas Kavakos began responds with a long and very beautiful was to be based on music of Carl Maria von mixing, than the other movements. The little studying violin under Stelios Kafantaris at the cantilena which is challenged by the Weber. In April 1940 Massine brought his pentatonic ‘Chinese’ tune is surrounded with a age of five, gaining his diploma from the signal-figure in the winds but continues to ballet troupe to Cornell University where veritable thesaurus of oriental-sounding Greek Conservatory. An Onassis Foundation develop with increasing floridity and lyrical Hindemith was now a visiting professor; but percussion (its first few notes in vast-spaced scholarship enabled him to attend intensity against muted strings. Suddenly the choreographer and composer quarreled over augmentation on tubular bells). The central master-classes with Joseph Gingold at Indiana ‘signal’ breaks out with minatory force, and the proposed music and décor, and the episode is a rollicking fugue in jazz style for University. By the age of twenty-one he had the opening music returns, blown up into a scheme was shelved. Hindemith decided to winds and percussion, recalling Hindemith’s won numerous prestigious competitions, grandiose, aggressive tutti. Calm is restored use his drafts for this ballet as the basis of a essays in swing and ragtime of the early including the Sibelius and Paganini and the violin returns, decorating the cantilena four-movement orchestral piece instead, and 1920s. international violin competitions. As a soloist melody, heard now on solo clarinet. the result was the Symphonic The Scherzo casts its shadow forward into he performs with most of the world’s The finale, marked Lebhaft, begins in Metamorphoses on Themes of Carl Maria the first movement. There is an indefinably prestigious orchestras, and as a recitalist and brilliant, excitable vein with much virtuoso von Weber, completed in August 1943. Eastern flavour to the rather truculently chamber musician appears at many writing for the soloist and snatches of The first and last of the four movements assertive A minor subject with which the work international festivals, including his own vigorous fanfare. A more lyrical idea sounds as are based on Nos 4 and 7 respectively (J242 begins (though this is perhaps sufficiently annual chamber music festival at the Athens if it might be a second subject, but instead a and J266) of Weber’s Huit Pièces pour le accounted for by the fact that Weber’s Megaron.