Paul Hindemith: Concerto per pianoforte e orchestra (1945)

[@andrewdaws7275]

Hindemith is an acquired taste, and I'm glad I've acquired it. A fascinating and worthwhile concerto

[@WilliamJamesRoss]

I have always thought of Hindemith as an excellent craftsman but anything but mystical, but this Concerto's second movement has definite mystical overtones! I listened with rapt interest. Larry Smith was a great conductor. I accompanied the Symphony chorus in San Antonio with him conducting for rehearsals and used to chat with him when I met him in the grocery store. Here his artistry is displayed at its best!

[@MichaSchlechtriem]

Very good Concerto and a very fine performance, too!

[@OrangeSodaKing]

Lee Luvisi is an incredible and sadly underrated pianist.

[@stueystuey1962]

Starting to fall in love with this piece and Hindemith all over again. Wonderfully modern, late romantic and neoclassical not to mention conceptually inventive and musical. Did I leave anything out?

[@mikekevitt1322]

This composition reminds me a bit of Stravinski's Right of Spring. Am I off on that ?

[@TheProsaicCult]

Maybe? He wrote two monumental operas, several large scale choral works, organ sonatas, and organ concertos and lots more. Widely regarded as one of history's greatest composers.

[@stueystuey1962]

@@mikekevitt1322 I can not tell a lie; I have listened to Rite of Spring only a couple of times!

[@jensrayz5018]

Wonderful piece of music, very well played and recorded.

[@Twentythousandlps]

This is Hindemith's final work for piano and orchestral forces. Before it were the Kammermusik no. 2 with 12-piece ensemble, the recently discovered Left-hand concerto, the Konzertmusik with brass Op 49 and The Four Temperaments with string orchestra.

[@intelligencesofanultradime1947]

Formulation of perfection! Thank you for posting!

[@yowzephyr]

0:00 is a good place to start. 8:28 2nd mvt. 17:12 3rd mvt.

[@jameswginn]

a cool polished gem of a piece.

[@MichaelConwayBaker]

I think Stuart (below) sums up my feelings. This is a wonderful piece.

[@charlottewhyte9804]

very good ecording. Don,t know this work,but I like it.

[@robertwalker2052]

Who is Lee Luvisi? What an affinity for this music.

[@gerardbegni2806]

This concerto dates from a pariod when the experimental and innovative style of Hindemith was behind him. He was fully a master, and gave us masterly conceived scores. Such is this piano concerto, not one of the best known scores of the composer.

[@DavidA-ps1qr]

Excellent analysis

[@Piflaser]

Excellent concerto.

[@gerardbegni2806]

@@Piflaser This concerto rises the "Hindemith problem" in full light. Keeping a liberal and democartic mind, we can however move to some opposite conceptions. Should we reject him since he did not bring key solutions to the modern music, not only as the 2nd Viennese school, but also Debussy, Bartok & Varèse? Should wa admit it as a young and somehow provocative young composer (and as such a mamabner of the progressist post WW1 generation at large who turned more and more to some kinf d oàf academic writing? Or should xe candiser this "fial" writing as a mastrerwork in itself, to be evaluated only against its own criteria. WXhezn I was younger, I respected this composer of course but my opinion was rather the first one. Now that I have "filetered" many quite innovative but poor and superficial writings, I tend to consider this masterwork as one of the most fruitful definition of music. It applmies to Barok ans Webern as well. If you study Webern in a very careful way, you can see that his way was ot at alla rights, but had also hesitating stops and sometimes U-turns. The same about the last Bartok, or even Debussy.

[@Piflaser]

My opinion is, watch every composer as a single event and also every work. Let the musicologists make their job, but trust in your own decisions. Hindemith is one of the great composers, who made it his way.

[@gerardbegni2806]

@@Piflaser Fully agree with you. Do you know his astonishing string quartets? .

[@bradforddale4306]

All I can say is WOW!!!

[@gabrielmeruelo3158]

I have always had a negative impression of XX century composers, but this is refreshing music. I have been listening lately to Milhaud, Mesaien, some Honneger, and others. Some of it is quite good. I still don't care for the far-atonal music of some of the twelve tone composers like Schomberg, Berg, and Wever, specially when it's associated with depressing expressionistic themes, but I try not to be prejudicial when it comes to its purely musical, not philosophical qualities, and specially so with people like Hindemith and Messaien. Gabe Meruelo.

[@Ung97]

Wozzeck is really good, actually!

[@nathanielwilson183]

It takes a while to be ready for extended chromaticism.

[@chronophontes]

I'm also not fond of atonal music generally, but I have to give Stravinsky credit - he's able to make even atonal music sound good!

[@nathanielwilson183]

When did he ever write something atonal!?

[@chronophontes]

Toward the end of his life. In the fifties he started experimenting with occasional atonality (possibly at the urging of Robert Craft), and by the sixties he wrote nothing else. He may have felt that it was a logical extension of neoclassicism. (I'm thinking of Agon - 1957, Threni - 1958, and Variations 1965.)

[@ChrisBreemer]

Hindemith at his bubbling best :D

[@steffen5121]

*opens a bottle of fizz*

[@gunnarasplund2809]

This is not the concert dedicated to Paul Wittgenstein. This concert was dedicated to Puerto Rican pianist Jesús María Sanromá, and premiered in Cleveland in 1947. You are being confused with an earlier work by Hindemith, Klaviermusik mit Orchester op. 29, composed in 1923. And, obviously, this is not a left-hand piano concerto.

[@johannesfischer5110]

Gunnar Asplund ü

[@treesny]

Yes, quite right. Jesús María Sanromá was a favorite interpreter for many contemporary American composers, and an important figure in promoting music education in Puerto Rico. In 1939, Sanromá and Hindemith recorded the composer's Sonata For Piano 4 Hands (1938) and the brand-new Sonata #3 for Viola & Piano; both are posted on KZbin. Hindemith felt he was off-form for the viola sonata, but he sounds in fine shape playing "secondo" to Sanromá's "primo" in the piano duet: a scorching performance, and an excellent corrective for those who think of Hindemith as a predominantly cerebral or "academic" composer. :)

[@菅野茂-i4p]

音楽はこうでないといけない。

[@sanjosemike]

Harrythjuh66 is correct. I was at that performance with Leon Fleisher in 2005, and in fact was the only time I heard it played publicly. Wittgenstein did not have the technique to play this work in any case. It was completely beyond him in every sense. sanjosemike

[@terramia2849]

W HINDEMITH PURTROPPO COSì POCO ESEGUITO

[@gunnarasplund2809]

And, obviously, this is not a left-hand piano concerto.

[@sansovino4124]

It is a left hand concerto, but it is a right hand concerto at the same time.

[@klaasdamhof5346]

Pierre Boulez did not like Hindemith. I like Hindemith, Boulez is forgotten already.

[@gerardbegni2806]

I do not think that it is so fruitful to reak the musiic in two incopmpatible boxes. I do not thinjk =that Boulez is forgoteen. Many new interpretes plmay some of his masterworks, and some of his thouhts - perhaps not those that he brought on the forefront of the scenery -can nurture innovative composers.

[@finneganlindsay]

Well, Boulez at his height pretty much hated everyone. About him being "forgotten", that is pretty much impossible since he was one of the greatest conductors of his time and has left great recordings of other masterful composers.

[@WilliamJamesRoss]

Boulez is anything but forgotten already!

[@Elmeromanny]

Is this considered Neo-Classical? If so, Why?

[@AwesomeTingle]

+Emmanuel Quiroz Neo-Classical, because neo dodged a buncha bullets in order to stop the bad guys who were gonna destroy all of Hindemith's classical music

[@MuseDuCafe]

+Emmanuel Quiroz It is a bit broad, and numbers of composers all called 'neoclassical' have quite a different sound one to the next. I'd say read up a bit, first in Wiki. []en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoclassicism_%28music%29

[@stueystuey1962]

I would consider this Neo-Classical. The composer is consciously composing in a style and using forms, techniques and modalities associated with the accepted "Classical" style at a time when there were other styles, forms and techniques available to him. I have always felt or perceived in Hindemith much that is Modern, but he so consciously adhered to the traditions handed down to him that he himself wore the badge of NeoClassicism with pride and honor.

[@Piflaser]

Neo classical is more than the form, it is also the musical language depending from musical languages of past times. (some works of Poulenc, Grieg Holberg Time Suite, Schnittke Suite for piano and violin). In this sense Hindemith is not neo classical, as his musical language always is modern.

[@nss4472]

@@Piflaser Neoclassical can be very very "modern": actual for one's times. Examples are Prokofiev with its "Classical" 1st Symphony and Stravinsky with his ballets and Violin Concert.

[@DavidA-ps1qr]

An interesting concerto from Germany's "last" internationally great 20th Century composer. Sadly, it's not Hindemith at his best, but at least all the hallmarks of this genius are there.

[@muslit]

Those hideous octaves!

[@ncrean66]

Boring. Nothing new since Kammermusik op's 24 and 36.