Hindemith: Kammermusik No. 1 Op. 24 No. 1 für 12 Solo-Instrumente

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.