Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Ondine Launches Hindemith Recording Project

This past Friday Ondine released what it called “the first volume in a series dedicated to Paul Hindemith’s (1895–1963) chamber works.” It is unclear just what this project will encompass in its entirety. After all, while Hindemith may not have written a sonata for every instrument of the orchestra, he definitely took in the string section, the winds, and the brass (and then added viola d’amore for good measure). Then there are the chamber compositions for multiple instruments, including seven string quartets and two string trios.

Given the contents of the first volume, however, it looks like the first two releases will cover those compositions given the title “Kammermusik” (chamber music) by Hindemith. These are part of three published collections, two in Opus 24 (1922), four in Opus 36 (1924–5), and two in Opus 46 (1927). However, as Calum MacDonald (cited on the Wikipedia page for this collection) observed, these require more resources than are usually associated with chamber music. Only the second Opus 24 composition, entitled “Kleine Kammermusik” and scored for wind quintet, is on what would usually be called “chamber music scale.” The first Opus 24 “Kammermusik” is scored for flute, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, harmonium, piano, string quintet and percussion, while all of the Opus 36 and Opus 46 pieces are concertos, each for a different instrument.

The compositions included on the new Ondine release are the two Opus 24 pieces and the first two in the Opus 36 set, the latter being concertos for piano and cello. Christoph Eschenbach leads the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Orchestra, which is joined by the Kronberg Academy Soloists. The concerto soloists are pianist Christopher Park and cellist Bruno Philippe.

From a personal point of view, my “first contact” with this collection was with “Kleine Kammermusik.” Since I lived in a suburb of Philadelphia, I had purchased an album of the Philadelphia Woodwind Quintet that included this piece. The group consisted of members of the Philadelphia Orchestra occupying the principal chairs of their sections: William Kincaid (flute), John de Lancie (oboe), Anthony Gigliotti (clarinet), Sol Schoenbach (bassoon), and Mason Jones (horn). (This group would later record Francis Poulenc’s sextet with Poulenc himself at the piano.)

The recording was a sheer delight. The overall rhetoric was upbeat and often downright comical. Even the introspective third movement (Ruhig und einfach) has a middle section that involves a prodigious repetition of a B minor triad, which is played by flute, (B-flat) clarinet, and horn (in F). However, the pitches of the triad keep bouncing from one instrument to another:

Excerpt from Hindemith’s “Kleine Kammermusik” (from IMSLP, public domain)

Those that know the music of Arnold Schoenberg may view this movement as a poke in that composer’s ribs with regard to the “Farben” movement in his Opus 16 set of orchestral pieces, completed in 1919, in which Schoenberg explored taking a single chord and having each pitch played by a sequence of different instruments.

In a similar vein, the overall rhetoric of the other four compositions tends to be upbeat. The only one of the pieces I had previously encountered was the first Opus 24 “Kammermusik,” which had been choreographed by a member of the Boston Ballet that I had come to know rather well during my graduate student days. My guess is that, like just about everyone else in the audience, I jumped out of my seat with the entry of a fire siren at the end of the final movement; and I am happy to report that this instance of “shock value” is as sure-fire as ever!

Where the concertos are concerned, I have to say that, when playing with a smaller ensemble, the soloist has the freedom to be less “competitive.” This is just as well, since the music that Hindemith wrote for solo performance tends to go over the top in the demands it imposes. In that context there is some sense that the small-scale ensemble is in a better position to be supportive of the soloist. The prevailing rhetoric says “We’re all in the same boat,” rather than having the ensemble say to the soloist, “You know, of course, that we are only here to make you look good!”

From that point of view, I shall take the liberty of taking issue with Hindemith’s choice of label: rather than calling these pieces “chamber” music, I would prefer to called them “collegial” music.

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