Karajan Conducts Bartok and Hindemith Masterworks

Two 20th century masterpieces - both also among the composers' most popular works - are today's subject matter.

The compositions are Béla Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and Paul Hindemith's Symphony: Mathis der Maler. The Berlin Philharmonic is conducted by Herbert von Karajan, making his debut here. The recordings are from 1960 (Bartók) and 1957 (Hindemith).

The music's importance is well captured by HiFi-Stereo Review's William Flanagan: "If there are  relatively few orchestral works composed since the end of World War I that can safely be said to have 'made' the standard repertory, there are even fewer that are conceded to be full-fledged masterpieces. Béla Bartók's Миsic for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (1936), and Paul Hindemith's Mathis der Maler symphony (1934) have each, in their composer's time, staked a claim to this manner of immortality...

"Both pieces have that elusive combination of properties of which masterpieces would seem to be made. They elicit the unswerving awe and respect of experienced listeners, and they still are accessible to the general public."

Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

Béla Bartók

Bartók's work was a commission by Paul Sacher for the 10th anniversary of his Basel Chamber Orchestra. The piece is quite extraordinary. "Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta occupies a special place among Bartók’s compositions," per Orrin Howard's notes for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, "not only for its fearlessly independent choice of instruments, but also for the intense expressiveness and vitality of the materials."

"What is the source of such diabolical music? The chromatic wanderings suggest Wagner and his Tristan, which gave us early Schoenberg. But there are other antecedents, and these include Strauss, Stravinsky, Debussy, Ravel, and, crucially, the folk music of Bartók’s native Hungary and its environs. It was this latter, large body of music, researched for years by Bartók, that became the all-pervading force of his creativity, the distinctive elements of which gave his work an individuality as unmistakable to the ear as a well-developed photograph is to the eye: rhythms that pound insistently or that are arrestingly irregular; modes and exotic scale combinations; severely simple melodies whose rise and fall stem from speech patterns; driving, often barbaric energy and, in contrast, wondrously provocative calms; an amalgam of simple triadic harmonies and acerbic dissonances. From all of these elements came Bartók’s ingenious, novel language."

The work is intricately worked out and endlessly fascinating.

Symphony: Mathis der Maler

Paul Hindemith

Hindemith's Symphony: Mathis der Maler also is a near contemporary of the Bartók. It was the result of a 1934 request by conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler for a new work that he could take on tour with the Berlin Philharmonic. The composer had been working on an opera on the subject of Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald. (Mathis der maler = Matthias the painter). He decided to compose symphonic movements that also could be used as interludes in the opera, and Furtwängler did then tour the piece.

Howard Posner wrote this for a Los Angeles Philharmonic program note: "Hindemith’s Mathis story is based loosely on history, but inspired by Grünewald’s famous paintings for the altar of the abbey at Isenheim in Alsace. Hindemith’s Grünewald decides that he cannot continue his comfortable life as a court painter while the peasants’ struggle for justice is exploding around him. He joins their revolt, only to be repelled by their violence. While taking refuge in the forest, he dreams that he is St. Anthony, subject of two of the Isenheim altarpiece paintings. In a scene based on one of those panels, St. Paul the Hermit tells Grunewald/Anthony that it was wrong to turn his back on his God-given artistic gifts, and that he must 'bow humbly before your brother and selflessly offer him the holiest creation of your inmost faculties' to become 'great, a part of the people, the people itself' - words reminiscent of Brahms’ 'republic' letter to Clara Schumann. The painter goes home, and finishes his life in a draining creative burst."

Grünewald's "Concert of Angels"

The opening movement is based on the painter's "Concert of Angels" from the Isenheim altarpiece, with Mary and the baby Jesus. It formed the opera's overture.

"Entombment"

The second movement is "Entombment," depicting Christ's burial. It comes from the end of the opera as Grünewald's life and career comes to an end.

"Temptation of St. Anthony"

Howard Posner: "The last movement is a wholly symphonic creation using music from the extended climactic scene in the opera, which is based on two of the Isenheim paintings. In one of them, St. Anthony is assailed by grotesque demons (Hindemith’s Anthony/Grünewald is confronted with his life choices in the form of characters from the opera). The other shows St. Anthony meeting St. Paul the Hermit. Shortly before the end of a movement of explosive force and great churning energy, the woodwinds introduce the 13th-century chant 'Lauda Sion Salvatorem,' which is answered by majestic alleluias in the brass."

The newly ascendant Nazis were none too pleased with either Hindemith or Furtwängler. Following the premiere, the work was banned as "decadent." The composer left Germany in 1938, eventually coming to the U.S.

Herbert von Karajan

The performances and recording are excellent. Howard Flanagan: "Karajan's attitude toward both works is admirable. He plays them as if they had existed quite as long, and just as significantly, as any major work by Beethoven or Brahms. The tempi are relaxed and judicious, the music doesn't sound aggressive or defiant. And the conductor has brought a splendid lucidity to the complex linear fabric that is the essence of both works."

The conductor recorded the Bartok work five times, but this is the only recording he made of Hindemith's music.

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More Bartók and Hindemith

I've newly remastered the other recordings of Bartók and Hindemith that have appeared on this site. The links below are to the download files.

Lili Kraus plays Bartók. The famed Hungarian pianist had been a pupil of the composer. The folk-derived works on this 10-inch LP - Three Rondos on Slovak Folk Tunes and Romanian Folk Dances - were recorded in 1938.

György Sándor plays Bartók. The pianist is the soloist in the first recording of the composer's Concerto No. 3. The Columbia LP includes Miaskovsky's excellent Symphony No. 21. Eugene Ormandy conducts. The download also includes a bonus in the form of Sándor's 1959 recording of the concerto. 

Hindemith's Four Temperaments. An early LP recording by the Boston-based Zimbler String Sinfonietta with pianist Lukas Foss. This composition is in a similar style to Mathis der Maler, and also is one of the composer's most popular works.

Piatigorsky plays Hindemith. The eminent cellist Gregor Piatigorsky performs the Hindemith Sonata (1948) and Samuel Barber's Sonata in C minor, Op. 6. Ralph Berkowitz is the pianist.