In 'The Office', one of the most popular TV shows (and one of my favorites) of the last 20 years, there was an entire episode devoted to that crucial existential question of our time: "Is Hillary Swank Hot?"
...They must have been running out of plotlines, but this is not unlike what goes through my mind when I hear the music of Hindemith. I have to ask myself, over and over again, "Is Paul Hindemith a Great Composer?"
Listen to the Sonata for Two Pianos. There is hardly a single moment in Hindemith's music that does not have some sort of flashy effect: either compositional or instrumental. It's almost empty noise, and yet you can't possibly be bored. At every instant, there's something new to engage the ear, and there is never a moment between them. There are plenty of highly celebrated works by Mozart and Bach which have no deeper thought than its virtuosity. I don't know if there is anything in Hindemith beneath the virtuosity. Even the rather gorgeous first slow movement of this sonata is entirely a canon, a virtuoso feat of imitation subtly passed between the two pianos. It's as though Hindemith never matured enough to stop saying to the audience 'Hey! Look what I can do!'
Perhaps the way to think of Hindemith is as one of the 'virtuosi' of the composing world, if it could be said... to composition what Heifetz was to the violin or Reiner to conducting. I still am not convinced I don't dislike Hindemith's music, but I'm still listening, and I'm never bored.
...maybe a third post tomorrow....
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