Paul HINDEMITH (1895-1963)
Nusch-Nuschi-Tänze (1921) [10:03]
Sancta Susanna, Op 21 (1921) [23:25]
Symphony Mathis der Maler (1933-1934) [27:26]
Aurine Stundyte (soprano), Renée Morloc (contralto), Annette Schönmüller (mezzo-soprano), Caroline Baas (speaker), Enzo Brumm (speaker)
Women of the Wiener Singakademie
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra/Marin Alsop
rec. 24-25 October 2019, 26 August 2020, Konzerthaus, Vienna, Austria
NAXOS 8.574283 [61:01]
The list of Hindemith’s operatic works shows that the form interested him all his life. It was especially true in 1919-1930, when he collaborated with Bertolt Brecht and went through an Expressionist phase, with its extreme subjectivity on the part of the artist or composer. Among the Expressionist works are two of the three operas featured directly or indirectly on this disc. Afterwards, Hindemith settled into his mature style. Mathis der Maler and its symphonic counterpart were written after his style had crystallized.
Das Nusch-Nuschi and Sancta Susanna are the second and third parts of a trilogy of one act-operas; the first was Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (Murderer, Hope of Women). All three operas deal, in contrasting ways, with erotic subjects. Das Nusch-Nuschi is the comic one. Its title refers to “nuts”, as in testicles, and the punch line results from one of the character’s lack of those. Hindemith later published a suite of three dances from the opera; that is what we have here. The first two dances are somewhat reminiscent of Bartók. They also demonstrate Hindemith’s life-long concern with formal procedure and contrapuntal complexity, as well as an attempt at “Burmese” music. The third dance combines elements of march, fugue and chorale, designed, according to the notes by Dominic Wells, to annoy the critics.
Sancta Susanna is a complete opera, quite different from Das Nusch-Nuschi. The sexuality is completely repressed, at least at the beginning, and the subject matter – and to some degree the music – may remind listeners of the contemporaneous works of Franz Schreker. But even this supercharged story is treated with Hindemithian clarity. The plot takes the nun Susanna from prostration at the altar to showing her nakedness before the fellow nuns. They proclaim her to be Satan and order her to repent; she refuses. This is powerful stuff; the music never lets up in intensity. Notable is the composer’s ability to make believable Susanna’s gradually dawning sexuality and self-confidence. The women of the Wiener Singakademie give their part all the needed eerieness. The soloists are all appropriately expressive, if one may use that term, especially Renée Morloc as the elderly Sister Clementia.
By 1933, Hindemith had embraced the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), the complete opposite of Expressionism. He began his full-length opera Mathis de Maler (Mathias the Painter) and the eponymous symphony at the same time. He later altered this practice somewhat with his opera and symphony Die Harmonie der Welt. (In the same vein, consider Taneyev’s concert overture and opera on the subject of the Oresteia.) Both Mathis works concern the German painter Mathias Grünewald (c.1480-c.1530). He was best known, together with sculptor Niklaus von Hagenau, for the Isenheim Altarpiece in Colmar, with its many sets of panels. In the opera, Mathis abandons art to fight in the Great Peasants’ Revolt of 1524-1525. In the process, he loses faith in art, politics, religion and human perfectibility, and finally goes off to die in the wilderness. The similarity between this story and Hindemith’s situation in Nazi Germany is intentional.
The symphony’s movements are titled after panels of the Isenheimer Altar. Angelic Concert, which corresponds to the prelude to the opera, comprises three original themes and the folk song Es sungen drei engel (Three angels were singing). Marin Alsop gets a beautiful sound from the orchestra, with just the right note of apprehension for what is to follow. Her tempi are a little fast for my taste but she handles the contrapuntal interplay with great clarity. The middle movement, Entombment, is Mathis’s renunciation of painting, full of sad woodwind solos before an almost lamenting coda. Temptation of St. Anthony is a partial rewriting of the opera’s penultimate scene in which the characters enact the story of St. Anthony in the painter’s nightmare. This is agitated and restless music, in which the orchestra excels, until the final set of alleluias. (In the opera’s last scene, Mathis renounces the world. If you are interested in the complete opera, do look at the excellent new recording on DVD or Blu-Ray of the 2012 Theater an der Wien production.)
Marin Alsop shows herself equally adept at all of Hindemith’s musical styles. She brings a real sense of excitement to Sancta Susanna and the appropriate seriousness and austerity to the symphony. I would very much like to hear her conduct the entire Mathis, or perhaps one of Schreker’s operas. The ORF Orchestra is also to be highly commended for their playing.
In 1998, Chandos issued a recording of the Nusch-Nuschi-Tänze, Sancta Susanna and two other works, all played by the BBC Philharmonic under Yan Pascal Tortelier. I do not know that performance, but I expect that you should do well to get this new disc, given the Naxos price and the brilliant recording.
William Kreindler
Previous review: Marc Rochester
