Eighty-one years after the Amar Quartet gave the first performance
of Paul Hindemith's String Quartet in C, op.16, up they pop
again, as youthful as ever, to kick off a new Naxos edition
of the complete Quartets. In fact Hindemith's original ensemble
was dissolved in 1929, whereas this Zurich-based Amar Quartet
was formed in homage to Hindemith by Swiss violinist Anna Brunner
in 1987!
For reasons to do with his complicated, portentous and perhaps
not always cohesive theoretical writings on music and society,
and his strong dislike of the 1950s avant-garde, Hindemith's
music has not always had an easy time of it from critics, and
quartets have played their part in the neglect of his music,
leaving relatively few recordings available to date. Yet Hindemith's
String Quartets are among his most instantly accessible music,
even in the Third, with which he firmed up his credentials among
contemporaries as a modernist. The two works in this first volume
follow in the tradition of Haydn, Beethoven and Brahms: well
proportioned, basically tonal with tuneful dissonance and growing
chromaticism.
Incredibly, Hindemith wrote his Second Quartet in 1918 as a
soldier on the battlefields of the First World War. Though he
kept a diary in which he described the horrors he experienced,
there is barely a hint of gloom in what is in fact a very attractive
work of considerable inspiration and aspiration - truly a form
of escapism. The C major follow-up is ironically more austere,
but the dazzling, Janáček-like finale is nothing
of the kind. Hindemith's part-writing is unremittingly inventive,
almost breathtaking in its scope and intricacy. Even the Third
remains quite approachable, and a good starting-point from which
to explore his impending, slightly weird but eminently fascinating
'Neue Sachlichkeit' ('New Objectivity') period.
The Amar Quartet give an excellent account of these works -
it is hard to believe Hindemith's old team could have done it
better. All four members face and pass many technically challenging
passages, and succeed also in imbuing Hindemith's not always
outwardly expressive works with a good deal of warmth and intensity.
Twenty-five years on, co-founder Anna Brunner is somehow still
only forty years old!
Sound quality is very good throughout. The Third is more closely
miked, making performer inhalations a little more audible. The
notes by German musicologist Giselher Schubert give a well written,
detailed account of the music, although the opening sentence
is baloney: "Paul Hindemith was the first composer of string
quartets since Spohr (1784-1859) who was also an outstanding
violinist and viola player". Respighi, Ysaÿe and Lalo had
evidently slipped his mind, among others.
If this first disc is anything to go by, this will be a must-have
cycle for all lovers of 20th century music.
Byzantion
Collected reviews and contact at reviews.gramma.co.uk
Amar Quartet (Anna Brunner (violin); Igor Keller (violin); Hannes
Bärtschi (viola); Péter Somodari (cello)) 