IDAGIO | Hindemith: Complete Viola Music, Vol. 3 – Music for Viola and Orchestra 00602448805966

Featuring

Lawrence Power
David Atherton
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Paul Hindemith

Did you know?

1/7

Composition History

Hindemith's concerto Der Schwanendreher, meaning 'The Swan-Turner', is based on old German folksongs, inspired by his opera Mathis der Maler's late-medieval German setting.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Hindemith's musical instincts favored 'objective' values like strong polyphony, firm structure, and Baroque stability, defining an influential neoclassical impulse in German music.

Instruments

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

Composer's Artistic Vision

In Der Schwanendreher, Hindemith envisioned the soloist as an itinerant fiddler playing a repertoire learned on his travels, embellishing melodies freely like a folk-fiddler.

Composer Biography

Paul Hindemith, the composer, began his career as a violinist, becoming leader of the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra at age nineteen, before switching to the viola after World War I.

Critical Reception

The poet Ezra Pound, after hearing Der Schwanendreher, declared that no one, not even Igor Stravinsky, compared to Hindemith in this kind of music.

Composition History

Hindemith composed Trauermusik (Music of Mourning) in just six hours for a BBC broadcast memorializing King George V, who died the day before Hindemith's UK premiere of Der Schwanendreher.