Paul Hindemith - Pittsburgh Symphony

[@milesdavisahead]

22:55-23:53 "Pittsburgh is a great old town".

[@windowtrimmer8211]

Pure Hindemith, yet at this late stage something new and bizarre was afoot.

[@cobblestonegenerator]

Wow, I've never even heard of this work until now! The Hindemith style is so prevalent here. I absolutely love it! Thanks so much!

[@steveegallo3384]

2Keyblades -- Sensational! (Were you able to figure out the actual NAME of this masterpiece?)

[@whatafreakinusername]

@@steveegallo3384 It's called the "Pittsburgh Symphony"

[@zariwawa]

It's so prominent it almost comes off as a parody of his style, and I'm saying this as someone who loves this piece and all of Hindemith's works.

[@samuellam3791]

One of my favorite Hindemith works of all time; it’s excellently constructed in Hindemithian fashion, yet shows so much humor and playfulness under the surface. So happy it’s being shared in score video form.

[@hostrauer]

The ending of that first movement is a juggernaut! By far the highlight of the piece for me, Hindemith at his best.

[@matthewnell]

I discovered this work about a week ago and have become quite fond of it. Imagine my excitement when I saw that a score video had recently been posted; thanks so much!

[@AndrewKosinskicomposer]

Great find!

[@stephenluttmann3432]

This may or may not be one of Hindemith's best works (I do like it a lot), but it's definitely one of his most unsettling ones. If you read the hagiographies, Hindemith was just so charmed by Pittsburgh's can-do big-city attitude and nearby Pennsylvania Dutch that he wrote (on commission, wouldn't you know) an homage. Okay, fine, the Neo-Regerian hypertrophies of harmony and counterpoint betray a boisterousness that could easily lapse into rage, but certainly it's all in good fun, isn't it? That's not what I hear at all. Consider: Hindemith was a big-city boy who as a young man practically lived in railroad cars, but he was also, once more settled a hiking enthusiast. His "A Composer's World" and his final lecture included sobering reflections on environmental destruction, and at the time he took this commission he would've been enjoying his retirement in a Swiss mountain chalet if his wife hadn't been urging him to concertize to (literally) within an inch of his life because she, Depression-scarred that she was, feared their going penniless . . . oops, we're not supposed to know that. But since that cat is finally out of the bag . . . The first movement is the most glorious brutalist depiction of a factory since Mossolov's "Iron Foundry" (with Max Brand's "Maschinist Hopkins" winning an honorable mention). The second movement just can't be a celebration of those cute colorful German peasants in Pennsylvania; the deliberately clumsy rhythmic displacements in the folk tune, the off-key piccolo -- these are so many peasants stumbling out the barroom door at closing time. I guess the wife is having a little Lumbedruwwel with her Lumbeschatz too. And the finale not only takes us back to the world of molten steel but gives us a mercilessly sarcastic rendering of another folk song (a fake one in this case: "Pittsburgh Is a Grand Old Town"), which ends up collapsing under its own weight. All in all this is a level of grotesquerie that even his early works didn't hint at. In the early works, after all, one still knew there was a "heile Welt" that served as reference. Here there's no such thing. Call me a deconstructionist (guilty as charged!), but I have to ask myself whether Hindemith, having seen Pittsburgh, hated everything about it, and maybe even consciously. In which case the proper audience reaction at the premiere would be something like "Is he having a joke at our expense? But it's such an accomplished work, I suppose, and we did pay the Great Man for it; I guess we have to applaud"--if through gritted teeth. Hindemith's last (circa post-1950) works have been discussed mostly in terms of surface effects -- "ooh, look! percussion!" Perhaps it's finally time to rescue him from his admirers and pupils, and a serious confrontation with this symphony would be an appropriate place to start. Tortelier's performance takes no prisoners, and while I wouldn't want to be without the other performances in my collection (Milan Horvat in a seat-of-the-pants performance with the ORF SO and -- get this -- Gennady Rozhdestvensky and the USSR Radio/TV SO), this one is pretty hard to beat.

[@thenewhindemithians8629]

The extensive quote from the 1st mvt of Webern's symphony (20:35) is interesting as it is gently treated even though he derided the theory behind it. I wasn't aware that his wife Gertude was so hectoring to him about money. The chalet is actually a huge chateau on an extensive property in Blonay near Monteaux. I was a guest of the Foundation in 2019 and spent time in their home. I didn't get the impression from the art and furnishings that they were short of money.

[@stephenluttmann3432]

@@thenewhindemithians8629 (1) And yet Hindemith was beginning to make peace, if uneasily, with the Second Vienna School toward the end of his life. By 1959 he was even conducting Berg's Chamber Concerto. My suspicion is that he was aware, if only seimiconsciously, that he'd painted himself into a corner with his theories --

[@stephenluttmann3432]

@@thenewhindemithians8629 (2) note how he kept putting off the composition of his Harmonie opera, which was supposed to be his compositional testament, and never could finish the third volume of his Unterweisung. Having gotten Harmonie out of his system, he could start exploring again.

[@stephenluttmann3432]

@@thenewhindemithians8629 (3) As for money, yes, by the late 1940s the Hindemiths were financially secure. They were receiving royalties from Germany again (and sales were boosted by the fact that Schott had plenty of Hindemith in back stock when the war ended), and of course there were commissions, gigs, and the Yale salary. The situation only improved with time, even as Hindemith, from an avant garde perspective, quickly faded into irrelevance.

[@stephenluttmann3432]

@@thenewhindemithians8629 (4) As for Frau H., you have to understand the Depression-era mentality. Lots of people who grew up under economic collapse and got the message at home that they were one step away from living on the streets would subsequently never feel financially secure.

[@verslaflamme8185]

nice

[@mikeg2924]

Hang on a minute please - Quote "Paul Hindemith - Pittsburgh Symphony (1958) Performed by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Conducted by Yan Pascal Tortelier" Unquote So which is it? Hindemith/Pittsburgh or Tortelier/BBC?

[@PentameronSV]

I assume the quote is in this format: *[Composer]* - *[Name of composition]* ( *[Year of composition]* ) Performed by the *[Performing orchestra in this recording]* Conducted by *[Conductor in this recording]* In other words, Tortelier/BBC.

[@whatafreakinusername]

The piece is called the “Pittsburgh Symphony”

[@zacharydetrick7428]

lmao

[@muslit]

One of the least attractive orchestral works of Hindemith, his last. He must have been thinking of steel furnaces while writing it. There is a preponderance of string glissandi, new for Hindemith, and fingered harmonics in the violins and violas. Other than that, I don't hear anything terribly interesting melodically - unusual for Hindemith. Harmonically, he might have been making a point by writing something verging on atonality, but sticking to his tonal theories (2nd movement), considering the time it was written. I will say the quiet sections are the best in this work.