Hindemith Orchestral

This beautifully programmed CD presents three settings for viola and orchestra and a more eloquent statement about the beauty of the viola as an instrument would be hard to imagine (except for perhaps including Vaughan Williams' 'Flos Campi'). The viola finds that middle voice between violin and cello, a rich tone with a built in quality of mournfulness. That quality has inspired the works on this recording and the result is some of the more wistful music ever written. Dennis Russell Davies conducts the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra with the superb violist Kim Kashkashian.

German composer Paul Hindemith wrote concertos for nearly every instrument in the orchestra. Here you get a concert for one of the most common instruments, the violin, along with two distinctively textured orchestral works, the giant Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by C.M. von Weber and the somewhat obscure Konzertmusik für Streichorchester und Blechbläser (Concert Music for Strings and Brass Instruments), the earliest piece on the program (it was written in 1930).

Within the extensive repertoire of the German composer Paul Hindemith (1895–1963), music for cello and piano occupies a considerable position in terms of both quantity and quality. Hindemith was primarily a violist and conductor, but his wide-ranging interests led him to experiment with a great variety of instruments both as composer and player, making him a de facto multi-instrumentalist. Among his favourite instruments, the cello always occupied a special place in his activities, among other things because of his collaboration with his brother Rudolf, an excellent cellist.