Hindemith: Kammermusik No. 2 Op. 36 No. 1 Klavierkonzert

Famed for its divine decadence, explosive politics, rampant inflation and feverish creativity. Germany’s Weimar Republic – born in the wake of World War I – ended in 1933 with Hitler’s seizure of power.

Nothing is more evocative of this tumultuous ear than Kurt Weill’s piquant, jazzy score setting the iconoclastic texts of Bertolt Brecht. Putting them graphically in context are works by other musical luminaries of the era: lust Korngold, purposeful Hindemith, sensitive Berg and revolutionary Schoenberg.

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) is a greatly misunderstood composer. General opinion would have it that his music is rather dry, academic and lacking in humour but this is very far from the truth, as this set of his complete Kammermusik beautifully illustrates. The seven Kammermusik (Chamber Music) were written in the 1920s and are the first works of Hindemith's maturity, at a time when he had already established himself as one of the leading young composers in Germany. Hindemith's music here is very much of its time, being a thumb-to-nose reaction to the romantic excesses that had gone before. Kammermusik No.1, written in 1921, reflects the composers earlier experience as a performer in dance bands and musical comedy orchestras; Nos.2-7 are all concertos, each for a different soloist and instrumentation, that in essence have a more than passing resemblance to the Brandenburg Concertos of Bach.

Neo-classicism with a German accent – a recording from the mid 1960s with outstanding soloists more usually associated with Baroque music.

A generous and adventurous collection of piano concertos played by the Russian Giant of the Keyboard, Sviatoslav Richter.

Next to standard concert repertoire some novelties, like the Franck, Britten, Berg and Hindemith works.

Famous conductors like Evgeny Svetlanov, Kyril Kondrashin and the recently deceased Rudolf Barshai (his favourite conductor).

One of the greatest pianists of the 20th century, Sviatoslav Richter was also one of the most self contained, enigmatic and elusive artists of the time.A fierce self-critic he seldom was happy with the results of his recordings. His criticism often embraced conductors, producers and sound engineers.

These recordings capture him a wide range of concertos from Bach to Britten, via his beloved Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven (though he only recorded his concertos 1&3 and the Triple Concerto) and Brahms. Many of the recordings date from prior to the commercial releases. The Dvorak here is from 1966 and conducted by Kondrashin. The famous EMI LP with Kleiber appeared in the 1970s – Richter claimed that neither he nor Kleiber were in the best form. In the case of the Britten concerto with the composer conducting, the recording here is from 3 years earlier than the famous Decca LP. Richter was unhappy with this as Britten was apparently ill and ‘a shadow of himself’. The Brahms 2 and the Schumann are from private tapes owned by conductor George Georgescu who is at the helm in both concertos. A good example of Richter’s self - criticism can be found in his comment on his later RCA Chicago Symphony/Leinsdorf recording ‘one of my worst records…I can’t bear it’. It won a Grammy! This set also includes some of the lesser known works Richter championed - Les Djinns by Franck and the Dvorak Piano Concerto which he played more than 25 times from the 1960s to the 80s. He did more than any pianist to restore this work to the repertoire.