Hindemith: Kammermusik, Vol. 1

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’s postwar period may rightly be described as a time of new beginnings not only for Hindemith personally but also for the European concert world, both in economic and artistic respects. It was during this time that Hindemith wrote his Kammermusik No. 1 (1922), a work for an ensemble of twelve solo instruments. Through to 1929 it was followed by six solo concertos that he designated as the Kammermusiken Nos. 2–7. At the premieres of four of these works the composer himself performed as an instrumentalist or as a conductor. Hindemith described the special character of such solo concertos for chamber orchestra in 1925, when he evaluated compositions that had been submitted to a competition: “The term ‘solo concerto’ is almost nowhere properly understood. Work indeed is done with solo instruments, but they do not perform in concerto style. In others, the prescribed ‘chamber orchestra’ is merely a reduced large orchestra that […] limits itself to producing a noise similar to the one traditionally produced by the larger groups of musicians but with shriveled means. In my view, this chamber orchestra has nothing to do with a proper chamber orchestra, in which only a few instruments of a very specific character (specified by the work) are in operation and with which genuine chamber-musical work is done.” By the time Hindemith ended the series of his seven Kammermusiken in 1929, he stood at the center of the German music world.