For a quick interval, Paul Hindemith appeared to have the musical world at his toes.

Internationally acclaimed in the course of the early Thirties as a pedagogue and excellent viola participant, Paul Hindemith‘s place because the main German composer of the youthful era appeared unassailable after securing prestigious commissions for brand new orchestral works from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic in 1930 and ’32.

Alongside this breakthrough, he had solid off his earlier fame as a musical iconoclast, modifying his artistic outlook to embrace a extra accessible model.

What’s Mathis der Maler Symphony about?

A comparability of the topic issues of the 2 operas that body this era neatly illustrates Hindemith’s important change of route.

Whereas Neues vom Tage (Information of the Day), premiered in 1929, is a biting satire on the goings-on in a Berlin day by day newspaper, Mathis der Maler (Mathis the painter), composed from 1933-34, is a profoundly critical work charting the lifetime of the early-Sixteenth-century artist Matthias Grünewald, whose struggles to keep up freedom of expression brought on him briefly to desert his career and take up arms with the politically oppressed in the course of the German Peasants’ Struggle of 1524.

Why did Hindemith compose Mathis der Maler Symphony?

It was hardly coincidental that Hindemith ought to write an opera with this explicit situation on the very second that Germany was experiencing nearly unprecedented political turmoil. In early 1933, the Nazis’ rise to energy had resulted in a haemorrhaging of the German musical scene, with the elimination of many main personalities that have been deemed by the brand new regime to be unacceptable on aesthetic, political and/or racial grounds. Though Hindemith had good purpose to worry for his personal future, he nonetheless believed that he might win over the Nazis together with his newer compositions.

Pushed by that goal, he enthusiastically accepted a request from conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler to put in writing a brand new orchestral work for the Berlin Philharmonic’s 1933-34 season.

The fee couldn’t have come at a extra acceptable time, for it enabled him to showcase a few of the music already composed for Mathis, which he hoped may assist safe a staging of the whole opera. Initially, he contemplated compiling a collection drawing upon two interludes from the opera which have been impressed by Grünewald’s work for the altarpiece on the Isenheim Abbey in Alsace. However after drafting a 3rd and extra prolonged motion, he determined to show the work right into a fully-fledged symphony.

How was Mathis der Maler Symphony acquired?

The Mathis der Maler Symphony, first carried out in Berlin in March 1934, was so successful that many different German orchestras eagerly integrated the work into their programmes. However Hindemith’s place proved to be something however safe. Following a hearsay that he had made disparaging remarks about Hitler whereas on tour outdoors Germany, zealous Nazis spearheaded a marketing campaign to stop additional performances of the Symphony.

Issues got here to a head in November 1934 after Furtwängler had written a newspaper article staunchly defending the composer. Sadly, the conductor’s well-meaning help critically backfired. The next month, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels delivered a speech condemning Hindemith’s work as manifesting ‘drastic affirmation of how profoundly the Jewish mental an infection has eaten into the physique of our personal individuals’.

After such a public outburst, Hindemith’s hopes of persuading any German opera home to stage Mathis have been utterly dashed. The state of affairs turned much more precarious after the Nazi authorities’s Reichsmusikkammer issued an official ban on all performances of Hindemith’s music in Germany. This motion inevitably prompted the composer to sever ties together with his native nation – in 1938, he moved to Switzerland, the place Mathis was given for the primary time on the Zurich Opera, and two years later he settled within the US.

A information to the music of Mathis der Maler Symphony

From our vantage level, it appears deeply ironic that the Mathis der Maler Symphony ought to have occasioned such opposition from the Nazis. In spite of everything, its stylistic elements, which draw so closely upon German folksong and chorale, might hardly be described as decadent.

Certainly, listeners pigeonholing Hindemith as a sober neo-classicist will certainly be stunned by the Romantic heat of the Symphony’s first motion – entitled ‘Engelkonzert’ (Live performance of Angels), its richly scored G main string chords and sensible splashes of color vividly challenge Grünewald’s picture of Mary and the toddler Jesus being serenaded by angels.

In distinction, the far more sombre second motion, ‘Grablegung’ (Entombment), depicts the crucified Jesus mendacity upon a tomb. Hindemith reserves his most dramatic music for the opening of the finale, ‘Versuchung des heiligen Antonius’ (The temptation of St Anthony), depicting St Anthony being viciously attacked by grotesque demons.

Extra like this

A extra delicately scored part, impressed by Grünewald’s portray of St Anthony assembly St Paul the Hermit, supplies a quick second of repose earlier than Hindemith locations these demonic and consolatory components into direct battle with one another. However the closing passage, with the woodwinds intoning the Thirteenth-century chant ‘Lauda Sion Salvatorem’, adopted by a grandiose chorale within the brass, brings the Symphony to a strongly affirmative conclusion.

One of the best recordings of Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler Symphony

Paavo Järvi (conductor)

Frankfurt Radio Symphony

Naïve V5434

Though Hindemith stays arguably essentially the most deeply retro and grievously underrated of all Twentieth-century masters, his Mathis der Maler Symphony has maintained its place within the repertoire and boasts a sizeable stream of positive recordings.

The excessive requirements of efficiency have been established from the very outset by the composer’s pioneering 1934 recording by which he carried out the Berlin Philharmonic. Over 20 years later, the identical forces got here collectively to document the work once more for Deutsche Grammophon, a benchmark efficiency of nice heat and depth captured in first rate mono sound, though missing maybe the depth and readability of engineering that may be present in newer releases.

Between the Nineteen Sixties and ’90s, the Symphony turned very a lot the province of main American orchestras. Traditional recordings embody the warmly Romantic interpretations from Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia (Sony), and the identical orchestra carried out by Wolfgang Sawallisch (Warner). Extra dispassionate accounts have been provided by William Steinberg and the Boston Symphony (DG) and the fleet-footed Herbert Blomstedt and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (Decca). Each considered one of these performances boasts splendidly manicured enjoying, and nearly all of them have justifiably garnered important acclaim.

But the Mathis der Maler Symphony quantities to excess of a blinding orchestral showpiece. A prime advice in such a extremely aggressive area subsequently has to convey one thing extra. On this respect, Paavo Järvi and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra’s stay 2010 recording actually does stand out from the group. Virtually like an image restorer revealing the unique colors of a pale masterpiece for the primary time, Järvi reinvigorates Hindemith’s rating, highlighting innumerable delicate particulars of texture, steadiness and phrasing usually missed in lots of different recordings.

Such a forensic method might so simply sound over-fussy and self-conscious, but Järvi by no means loses sight of the overarching trajectory of every motion. Adopting eminently smart tempos all through, his interpretation conveys all of the drama and textural number of Hindemith’s musical invention with burning depth. Naïve’s recording is right, combining depth of orchestral sound with an admirable readability that enables one to savour each strand in Hindemith’s linear writing.