Not a long post.
Symphony in E-flat. A Hindemith masterpiece. It took me a while to get into Hindemith. I have no idea if Hindemith's a truly great composer with something original to say, but he's a great musician whose music is so exciting, so perfectly made, and so much fun, that I wonder if it matters. He's one of those musicians Berlioz described Mendelssohn as: "He knows everything, but lacks inexperience."An ostentatious brilliance like Hindemith, who played practically every musical instrument and learned every musical style, is almost too perfect a musician to be a great composer. The urgency to dare something shocking and never before done is not quite there in Hindemith after he reaches maturity. He belongs in that gallery of musical geniuses whose genius was so obvious that it became a limitation: Mendelssohn, Liszt, Saint-Saens, Rachmaninov. Not bad company, that. Hindemith lived and breathed music so naturally that he never really had to struggle to create anything, and missing from much music is the sense that there is some essential ecstatic truth which can only come from experiencing the hardships of life outside music, where Hindemith was an Emperor of all he surveyed. His music may not have the greatness of contemporaries like Bartok and Shostakovich, but the brilliance of it is so present that it scorches the ear. It has that same instant listenability which you find in Mendelssohn or Liszt. It may not be deep, but the perfection instantly engages and satisfies as only the most natural musical genius can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8mMjfa06Xo
No comments:
Post a Comment