The Suite '1922' comes from the title year and out of Twenties experimentalism. In the Fifties, he changed again, with an expanded view of tonality – one which, incidentally, attempted to synthesize harmonic practice from modality through dodecaphony. He, to a large extent, forged his own harmonic language – one based on fourths, rather than on the usual thirds. Expressionism, jazz, and Dada mostly fell away. Where Stravinsky tended to model his works on Handel and, mainly, Mozart, Hindemith looked to Bach. After World War I, he got caught up in various artistic movements of the Twenties: Dada, jazz, Expressionism, and the Young (or New) Classicism, a German phenomenon distinct from the Paris brand launched by Stravinsky. Hindemith began under the influence of Brahms and Reger. This CD gives us glimpses of Hindemith at two quite different stages of his career.

Music of such depth, wit, craft, and sheer tonal beauty doesn't come along so often that we can afford to ignore it. I can't say everything I've heard struck me as undeservedly neglected, but I can say it of the majority. Francis, concertos for clarinet, horn, trumpet and bassoon, cello, and violin, chamber operas, chamber music in general, oratorios, short choruses, and much more. Of course, his two hits, the Symphonic Metamorphoses and the Mathis der Maler Symphony, continue to draw recordings, but works that should stand among the best of the last century go begging: the Philharmonic Concerto, the Konzertmusiken, the Symphonies in E-flat and B-flat, the ballet St. There's a lot of good, even great Hindemith music to catch up with. Why Hindemith's reputation should still languish in the cellar remains a mystery to me. But it's been years since serialism had anything like a hegemony among composers. Ironically, late Schoenberg and late Hindemith sound very much alike, never mind the procedures they use. In a way, Hindemith made a huge career mistake by setting himself as the polemic opposite to Schoenberg and dodecaphony – the anti-Schoenberg – because he mistakenly believed that tonality was 'natural.' As a result he became a punching bag for the other side, which excommunicated him from the One True Church of Modernism and buried his music. I have no idea why the music of Hindemith currently lies under such a cloud, other than there's a lot of it and it's easier to ignore it than to engage with it. Summary for the Busy Executive: Jekyll and Hyde.

Ludus tonalis.