Perhaps more on Hindemith later. In the meantime, appreciate my favorite pianist. The second he tries to give a downbeat you'll see why. The performance gets funnier as it goes along. From the moment after the first chord, the concertmaster seems to be signaling across the piano to the principal second violinist "I got this."
This is some of the greatest piano playing and the worst conducting I've ever seen, and Gulda doesn't give a crap. He hums like Bud Powell, he sings like Glenn Gould, he dresses like Thelonius Monk, he conducts like he's having an acid freakout, and he literally loses his place in the score at one point and spends an entire orchestral tutti trying to find the right where the orchestra is. But he plays like Gulda. The Beethoven pianist of Beethoven pianists. He's a little past his prime here, it's not Gulda at anything near his best, but I'm hardly the first to express the opinion that Gulda's Beethoven had more insight and excitement per bar than anyone since Schnabel, and still far better technically than Schnabel was. This must have been a bit like what it was to hear Anton Rubinstein or Bulow or Tausig in that first flush of excitement of discovering what a virtuoso can do with Beethoven sonatas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weK_L4oxbEo
Gulda at his best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJyPJPCTLO8
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