About this Artist

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Editorial Reviews

Smiling Paul Hindemith rides again. The one-time bad boy of German expressionist music -- remember the second act of his Weimar opera "Neues vom Tage" that opens with the soprano singing an aria from her bathtub? -- turned all-round good guy for American conservative music -- remember his years at Yale teaching his students to mind their dissonances? -- may have fallen out of favor with the avant-garde and the rear guard alike, but at least in his photographs and his recordings, he's still smiling. In this two-disc EMI collection of Hindemith conducting his own orchestral works adorned with a photograph of him on the cover, the composer proves a superb advocate for his own music. While most of the selections come from his later conservative period -- don't look here for his two most popular orchestral works: the "Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes" by Weber and the symphony drawn from his opera "Mathis der Maler" -- the performances are uniformly first rate and wholly persuasive. With the Philharmonia Orchestra, EMI's superlative studio orchestra, Hindemith turns in performances of the "Symphonia serena" and the "Symphony in B flat for concert band" that make these works sound lean but rich, tough but warm, and rigorous but -- impossible to believe but true -- boisterous. With soloists Louis Cahuzac in the "Clarinet Concerto" and particularly with Dennis Brain in the "Horn Concerto," Hindemith leads performances that are, for all intents and purposes, definitive. And while there are other recordings of the "Concert Music for brass and strings" and the suite from the opera "Nobilissima visione" that make a stronger case for the edgy vitality of the music, it could never be suggested that Hindemith and the Philharmonia's performances are not powerfully conducted and brilliantly played. Produced by Walter Legge, these recordings from the late '50s may sound their age -- don't listen for the laser-sharp clarity of digital -- but they're still clear, deep, and atmospheric. James Leonard, All Music Guide

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