Paul Rand

The late Hans Keller regarded Hindemith as one of the few composers able to produce what he called 'intrinsic' quartets, that's to say quartets addressed in the first place to the player (the listener being, as Keller put it, "a more or less welcome eavesdropper"). This collection includes the recently re-discovered early work in C major. The performances are technically and musically excellent. As a previous reviewer has noted, there is much to be said for listening to them in the order in which they were composed, so as to follow the development of Hindemith's style over a period of three decades.