Hindemith: Orchestral Works

Album review

This attractive album featuring the São Paolo Symphony Orchestra led by John Neschling includes three of Hindemith's most popular and appealing orchestral scores, all dating from the mid-'30s. Mathis der Maler, a 1934 symphony made up of three movements the composer incorporated into his opera of the same name, is a work with a mysteriously effective consolidation of seemingly disparate elements; it comes across as austere yet deeply intimate, and radiantly pure yet full of passion and ardor. Nobility is difficult to define in musical terms, but it's a quality that can be applied without reservation to Hindemith's majestic, warmly humane symphony. Nobilissima visione (1938), a suite based on a ballet about St. Francis, inhabits a similar emotional and musical world. It's a lovely, often serene piece, but it doesn't rise to the same transcendent level of inspiration as the earlier work. Symphonic Metamorphosis uses essentially the same harmonic language as the other pieces, but to an entirely different effect. Early in his career the composer was a brash, irreverent iconoclast and he wrote plenty of surreally humorous music, but by this mature phase in his career he was known for his sober rationality rather than for wit. Three of the four movements of Symphonic Metamorphosis, though, burble and erupt with a sense of extravagant whimsy that seems more characteristic of Prokofiev at his goofiest than of Hindemith. It's a wild ride, and terrifically fun. Neschling leads performances of exceptional insight, subtlety, and attention to detail. He makes the Mathis symphony really glow, and he revels in the absurdities of Symphonic Metamorphosis. The playing of the São Paolo Symphony Orchestra is world-class, and its sound is full and polished. The most notable aspects of the performances are the superb balance and the nuanced attention to the shadings of dynamics, which allow orchestral details to shine. Part of the credit for the clarity and lively sound certainly also goes to the excellent work of the engineers of BIS' SACD.

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