Viertel

First volume in a series dedicated to Paul Hindemith’s (1895–1963) chamber works includes the first three works in his Kammermusik series together with Kleine Kammermusik written for a wind quintet. This album continues a successful series of recordings of Hindemith’s music together with conductor Christoph Eschenbach. This series has earned him, among others, a Grammy award. These recordings of chamber music have been recorded with a group of young promising artists, including pianist Christopher Park and cellist Bruno Philippe who are playing the solo parts in the ‘Concertos’, Op. 36.

Hindemith was not only a composer but also a hugely talented viola player who wrote a number of remarkable, innovative works for his instrument. The piano-accompanied sonatas are relatively wellknown, so too the Trauermusik composed in a single evening to mark the death of King George V. The solo viola works have had less attention: Hindemith referred to them as Gebrauchsmusik, by which he meant compositions with simple, linear structures, often intended for amateur players: music that responded to a particular need or use.

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.