Hindemith: Sonata for Solo Viola, Op. 25 No. 1

Lawrence Power, Britain’s acknowledged greatest living viola player, continues his fascinating and acclaimed series of Hindemith’s complete viola music. This second disc features Hindemith’s solo viola sonatas. These works were all written for Hindemith himself to perform, and are thus are of special significance—as near to a personal testament, an intimate soliloquy, as exists in his multifarious and genre-spanning output.

The shadow of Bach lies over any composer writing a solo string sonata, and this is clear in the Passacaglia Op 11 No 5 Sonata, where Hindemith’s ultimate model is unmistakably the famous D minor Chaconne from Bach’s second violin partita—but viewed through a post-Brahmsian sense of sonority and architecture that produces a truly contemporary result. This ardent (and arduous) movement, a most impressive compositional feat, is the first example of a form which was to be one of Hindemith’s trademarks throughout his career, and it makes the Sonata something of a personal manifesto of artistic ambition. In later sonatas the severity of Hindemith’s mature style becomes evident—but harnessed, here, to the extraordinary virtuosity of the composer-performer, it gives rise to the most exhilarating and eloquent music.

Accustomed to singular journeys and daring propositions, Christophe Desjardins now offers us a veritable comprehensive survey devoted to his instrument. Viola/Multiples, a double-CD set, reflects a large portion of his activity as a performer: his fruitful collaboration with today’s leading composers and an ever-renewed desire to decompartmentalise genres and repertoires. The first disc, Solo, invites us to stroll through the 20th century, visiting masterpieces for solo viola, from Hindemith to Berio. The second disc, Multiples, uses contemporary works mixed with pieces of early music. Christophe Desjardins gives us a world première recording of Pierre Boulez’s Messagesquisse but also increasing his instrument in other ways, creating dialogues between Gilles Binchois and Jonathan Harvey, Carlo Gesualdo and Wolfgang Rihm.

Susanne van Els is recognised as one of the leading musicians in the Netherlands. She has premiered several new concertos written for her. This recording is part of her farewell to her career as a viola player, as she takes up a post in the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.

Some composers have left us an extensive catalogue of recorded performances, most notably Edward Elgar, Igor Stravinsky and Benjamin Britten. Others like Olivier Messiaen, Heitor Villa-Lobos and William Walton have left us significant, although limited, editions. All too many, however, have merely left us a mere fraction of their output and it was to bring these recordings to the record-buying public that the EMI Classics series COMPOSERS IN PERSON was planned and researched by Ken Jagger (1945-2007). He did include representative issues for five the above named composers in the series so as to provide a total of 20 releases.

Most composers are found as either conductors or pianists (so sometimes both) although some appear on other instruments – Hindemith as violist as well as conductor and Messiaen, Widor, Vierne and Dupré as organist.