IDAGIO | Hindemith: Complete Viola Music, Vol. 2 – Sonatas for Solo Viola 00602448805959

Featuring

Lawrence Power
Paul Hindemith

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Historical Context

Hindemith's championing of the viola was part of a wider early 20th-century movement to enlarge its repertoire, paralleling the work of virtuoso Lionel Tertis in Great Britain.

Instruments

Lawrence Power, the violist on this recording, plays a rare viola made by the Bolognese maker Antonio Brensi around 1610.

Compositional Technique

The solo string sonata, a demanding instrumental form where the player must imply harmony and counterpoint, had virtually fallen out of use since the Baroque era before Hindemith's time.

Composition History

Hindemith wrote all the works on this album for his own performance, making the four unaccompanied sonatas a personal testament or intimate soliloquy.

Composer Biography

Paul Hindemith was a versatile instrumentalist who claimed he could play any part in his Op. 36 Kammermusik concertos, including wind, brass, string, percussion, or keyboard.

Composer Biography

Although Hindemith seemed destined to be a violinist, having publicly performed Beethoven's Violin Concerto at 19, the viola was his great love, and he became internationally renowned as a virtuoso violist in the 1920s.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Hindemith probably wrote more solo repertoire for the viola than for any other instrument, and his works for viola are considered more numerous and significant than those by any other twentieth-century composer.