Ondine Completes “Kammermusik” Series

At the beginning of this month, Ondine released the second and final volume of the eight compositions that Paul Hindemith called “Kammermusik” (chamber music). Each of the four compositions is basically a concerto for a solo instrument and small ensemble. The fourth “Kammermusik” features the violin, the fifth is for viola, the sixth is for viola d’amore, and the seventh (and last) is for organ. The count of eight includes the “Kleine Kammermusik” (little chamber music) for wind quintet, which was included on the first volume.

Readers may recall that the first volume was released as initiating “a series dedicated to Paul Hindemith’s (1895–1963) chamber works.” Whether or not the series will now continue with the prodigious number of sonatas that Hindemith composed for a prolific number of instruments remains to be seen. The soloists on this second volume are, in “order of appearance,” Stephen Waarts (familiar to the Bay Area from his days as a child prodigy), Timothy Ridout, Ziyu Shen, and Christian Schmitt.

Photograph showing the sympathetic strings of a viola d'amore (uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Aviad2001, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

As was the case on the first volume, all four of the concertos sparkle with upbeat rhetoric. The virtuoso writing for the solo violin is finger-busting unto an extreme. However, the flood of technical challenges never seems to dampen Waarts’ high spirits. Nevertheless, the “main attraction” would have to be the viola d’amore concerto. This instrument dates from the baroque period and can be found in the scores of Johann Sebastian Bach. Somewhat in the spirit of a viol, it had six or seven strings for bowing. However, below those strings was a rank of “sympathetic” strings, tuned to reverberate with the bowed pitches. The result is a haunting sonority that served Bach particularly well in his BWV 245 setting of the Passion text from St. John.

Hindemith was passionate about this instrument and delighted in playing it himself. It should therefore be no surprise that he composed for it. For that matter, Hindemith also felt strongly about the viola; so both the fifth and sixth “Kammermusik” compositions are very much labors of love. However, spirits are consistently high across the entire album, suggesting that each of the compositions provides the opportunity for collegiality among its particular array of instrumentalists in complementing the energetic romps composed for the soloist. Once again, those instrumentalists are members of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Orchestra, led by conductor Christoph Eschenbach.