What Classical Music Are You listening to Now? III

[Richard Barrett]

Concert Music for Brass and Strings Op.50
Concert Music for Piano, Brass and Two Harps Op.49
Funeral Music for Viola and Strings
Symphonic Dances (for orchestra)
Symphony in Bb for Concert Band
Violin Concerto
Cello Concerto
Horn Concerto
Little Chamber Music for Wind Quintet
Sonata for Horn Quartet
Organ Sonatas (all 3 of them)
Piano Sonatas, no.2 ( of 3) being maybe the most enjoyable.
All the instrumental Sonatas with piano. Although they are all ‘fun to play’ ( several with fiendish piano parts*) the following are perhaps the most memorable for the listener:
Flute; Cor Anglais; Horn in F*; Horn in Eb*; Trumpet; Tuba*; Double Bass*.
Of the many songs with piano, one of the most profound is maybe ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’.
Last but not least, the Opera ‘Mathis der Maler’, plus of course the sublime Symphony with the same name.

My own Hindemith favourites list has very little in common with Tony's! - I would mention the operas Sancta Susanna, Das Nusch-Nuschi and Cardillac; the seven "Kammermusik" chamber concertos (one each for violin, viola, cello, piano, organ and viola d'amore, and one without a soloist), the Harp Sonata, the viola concerto Der Schwanendreher, the unaccompanied violin and viola sonatas, and the string quartets.

[Pulcinella]

My own Hindemith favourites list has very little in common with Tony's! - I would mention the operas Sancta Susanna, Das Nusch-Nuschi and Cardillac; the seven "Kammermusik" chamber concertos (one each for violin, viola, cello, piano, organ and viola d'amore, and one without a soloist), the Harp Sonata, the viola concerto Der Schwanendreher, the unaccompanied violin and viola sonatas, and the string quartets.

I know/have heard very few on Tony's list, and by no means all of these either, but would endorse the mentions of the organ sonatas, harp sonata, Der Schwanendreher, Trauermusik, and the Kammermusik concertos (after Mathis, of course!). Must listen to Nobilissima again.
Then, but off topic, there's Walton's Variations on a theme by Hindemith, the coupling to a version of Mathis and the Symphonic Metamorphoses that I have.

[Pulcinella]

Must listen to Nobilissima again.

Doing so; San Francisco Symphony/Blomstedt

Bank holiday muse: what other art-inspired pieces are there to concoct a concert programme with, this work being the result of a visit Hindemith made to Santa Croce in Florence in 1937?
Martinu's Fresques springs to mind, but apparently Respighi's Church windows were given that title after their composition/orchestration, not as an original concept.
McCabe's Chagall windows would fit the bill, though.

[teamsaint]

There is a full set of the Kammermusik, performed by the Ensemble 13 Baden Baden,in installments 152 and 153 of the Avant Garde project, with full liner notes.

http://avantgardeproject.conus.info/mirror/agp152/index.htm

http://avantgardeproject.conus.info/mirror/agp153/index.htm

You'll need to download ( which is free of charge)to hear, but I strongly recomend a listen.
I noticed that Gurney was listening to a recording by Chailly recently,so might try to get a listen to tha to compare.

The AGP tends to be pretty scrupulous about only allowing download of commercially unavailable le material, BTW.

Edit: there are some other Hindemith works on the AGP, including Marienleben.

[cloughie]

Hindemith is something of a strange composer, one I never really know what to make of, his place in musical history perhaps based more on Furtwangler's defence of him in the Third Reich than much of the music he wrote. However, I recall a Prom concert from the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and Claudio Abbado in 1995 when I was knocked out by the encore they played. I asked one of the orchestra members what it was and it turned out to be the Passacaglia from Hindemith's Nobilissima Visione.

I searched out a recording and came up with Wolfgang Sawallisch and the Philadelphia Orchestra. I do like the Symphonic Metamorphoses on a Theme by Weber and the Symphony Mathis der Maler which are included on the disc together with the Nobilissima Visione suite. Perhaps the unwieldy titles don't do Hindemith any favours but this is the extent of my knowledge of his music.

I think those three are my favourites also MTW LSO Abbado, MderM SRO Kletzki and NV CSO Martinon.

[vinteuil]

Doing so; San Francisco Symphony/Blomstedt

Bank holiday muse: what other art-inspired pieces are there to concoct a concert programme with, this work being the result of a visit Hindemith made to Santa Croce in Florence in 1937?
Martinu's Fresques springs to mind, but apparently Respighi's Church windows were given that title after their composition/orchestration, not as an original concept.
McCabe's Chagall windows would fit the bill, though.

... Mussorgsky, of course.

[Richard Barrett]

There is a full set of the Kammermusik, performed by the Ensemble 13 Baden Baden,in installments

Those are excellent performances, I think I prefer them to the Chailly set, and the Abbado, and what I think was the first complete recording, by Concerto Amsterdam in the 1960s.

[Pulcinella]

... Mussorgsky, of course.

Doh!
Brain in bank holiday mode, too!

[vinteuil]

.

... and praps de Bussy's Goldfish ?

http://www.allmusic.com/composition/poissons-dor-for-piano-l-111-3-mc0002448086

[Pulcinella]

Those are excellent performances, I think I prefer them to the Chailly set, and the Abbado, and what I think was the first complete recording, by Concerto Amsterdam in the 1960s.

It's the Concerto Amsterdam set I've got, but I think the Chailly set got a better recommendation when it came out.
Might be worth mentioning that KM7, for organ and chamber orchestra, is not the same piece as the organ concerto, which I have as the coupling to the organ sonatas. I find the (full) concerto a bit heavy going, but like the sonatas a lot (I used to have an LP of Lionel Rogg playing them, iirc).

[teamsaint]

Those are excellent performances, I think I prefer them to the Chailly set, and the Abbado, and what I think was the first complete recording, by Concerto Amsterdam in the 1960s.

There is an interesting comment in the liner notes to the Viola Concerto which says:

"This concerto, above all others, has become the point of departure of a Hindemith following,which has been able to produce only pale copies of what he succeeded in doing here".(Andres Briner).

Edit: just listening to the Kammermusik 6, the Viola d'amore concerto, and I had a powerful feeling of some other composer present, ( in my mind obviously) and then I realised that it was Malcolm Arnold.
Not sure how far the influences went, but I've also been meaning to go back to the slow movement of Arnold's first Horn Concerto, which is rather a striking piece of music. Perhaps there is something of Hindemith in that ? ( thats just a stab in the dark, BTW).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Bank holiday muse: what other art-inspired pieces are there to concoct a concert programme with[?]

An orchestral concert of course rules out Mussorgsky's piano masterwork, but there's also

Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead (after Böcklin)
Liszt's - Die Hunnenschlacht (after von Kaulbach). (If you've got a chorus handy, Liszt's St Elizabeth was inspired by frescos by Moritz von Schwindt).
Walton's Portsmouth Point (after Rowlandson) and Scapino (Callot)
Gerard Schurmann and Mark Antony Turnage have written orchestral works based on paintings by Francis Bacon
Gunther Schuller's Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... and praps de Bussy's Goldfish ?

Oh, well - if non-orchestral works are allowed, the liszt gets much longer!

[Petrushka]

An orchestral concert of course rules out Mussorgsky's piano masterwork, but there's also

Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead (after Böcklin)
Liszt's - Die Hunnenschlacht (after von Kaulbach). (If you've got a chorus handy, Liszt's St Elizabeth was inspired by frescos by Moritz von Schwindt).
Walton's Portsmouth Point (after Rowlandson) and Scapino (Callot)
Gerard Schurmann and Mark Antony Turnage have written orchestral works based on paintings by Francis Bacon
Gunther Schuller's Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee

Peter Maxwell Davies 5 Klee Pictures
Henze Raft of the Medusa

While the Henze isn't strictly orchestral it can fit into a programme as followers of my Towards the Millennium re-created concerts on The Rest is Noise thread will find out.

[Pulcinella]

Oh.....I should have started a new b/h fun thread!

Mention of Paul Klee takes me to
Sandor Veress: Hommage à Paul Klee, inspired by Klee's painting Stone Collection, so the liner notes tell me.

http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Teldec/0630199926