Hindemith's Concert Music for Brass and Strings
The German Composer’s First Orchestral Triumph of the 1930s
Jul 29, 2009
Paul Hindemith wasn’t much for unfettered romanticism. His music contained nothing fluffy or overtly sappy. His palette of orchestral colors favored tangy harmonies that bonded with rhythms that, while traditional, were a bit more biting and punchy.
But Hindemith made sure to weave some sweeter tapestries amidst the brusqueness. That can certainly be heard in his Concert Music for Brass and Strings, known also as Konzertmusik in his native German. Because of the lack of any woodwind and any percussion parts, the emphasis is squarely on the two sections of the orchestra that Hindemith frankly owned in terms of writing for them.
When discussing Konzertmusik on WNYC in New York in 2006, the great Leonard Slatkin, now the music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, said, “It’s a jazzy piece where it needs to be; it’s refined and elegant where it needs to be; and it’s certainly virtuoso.”
String and Brass Sections Get Their Exercise
Hindemith’s two-part Konzertmusik was the product of a notable set of commissions: music honoring the 50-year anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms was one; Howard Hanson’s Second Symphony, subtitled “Romantic,” was another. Serge Koussevitzky conducted its first performance on April 3, 1931.
The music opens with a D flat in unison which quickly swells into string glissandos in octaves. The brass section counters straight away with the delectable harmonies that make Hindemith’s writing for those instruments wholly identifiable. The brass alone introduces the primary idea, a march-like refrain that repeats until a slower section takes over. It’s startling that four trumpets, four French horns, three trombones and a tuba can sound like a full brass band.
Increasingly agitated brass threatens the slower, quieter passages in the strings and horns until Part I ends in an almost regal manner, with the unison D flat taking the final word.
Part II is in a clear-cut A-B-A format. The sixteenth-note workouts in the strings form the basis of the lively outer edges, while the introspective trio shows Hindemith at his most lyrical, with especially arresting string chords. Hints of jazz appear, especially in a couple of melodic fragments where Hindemith seems to slip in a blue note.
Galloping brass and a restatement of previous material enliven the final bars, and that pesky D flat makes one last appearance.
Recordings by Leonard Bernstein and Herbert Blomstedt
Concert Music for Brass and Strings serves as a table-setter for all of Hindemith’s larger works for orchestra in the 1930s and through the 1940s. Soon to follow were the Mathis der Maler symphony (1934), the high-octane Symphonic Dances (1937) and the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943), much to the uniform disdain of the Nazi Party.
Two recordings trump all others. Leonard Bernstein, a huge Hindemith supporter, led the New York Philharmonic in a 1961 reading that was destined to be untouchable. That is, until 1991, when Herbert Blomstedt delivered the goods with the San Francisco Symphony. It is astounding. So intense is the playing from the brass it all but leaps out of the ear buds, yet neither set of instruments drowns out the other.
Paul Hindemith’s music always deserves another try. Slatkin will certainly help the cause, when he conducts Concert Music for Brass and Strings with the Detroit Symphony in November during his inaugural season.
