I totally agree with you guys! Personally, I'm more familiar with his chamber music. He wrote sonata's for almost every classical instrument with piano. Right now, I'm working on the flute sonata, which is nice. More impressive are the sonatas for trumpet, for viola and certainly the one for trombone!! The piano parts are rather virtuoso, but always pianistic.
Together with Martinu and Janacek, I consider Hindemith as one of the most underestimated composers of the past century. His writing can get so intensly painfull... very touching music indeed!
yeah I have heard the flute sonata, have played the double bass sonata, and heard the trumpey sonata... I agree that the writing's pretty "pianistic", and I really like the harmonies and progression, very unusual.... Yeah I don't know alot about his solo piano stuff though, can someone point me to the right direction as well?
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"Classical music snobs are some of the snobbiest snobs of all. Often their snobbery masquerades as helpfulnes... unaware that they are making you feel small in order to make themselves feel big..."ÜÜÜ
Hindemith is currently under-appreciated-this happens to many composers. I would suggest that you become familiar with his most accessable works- "Mattis der Maler"and the "Symphonic Metamorpheses on themes of Weber". The three Sonatas for organ and any of the piano sonatas would also be good. Get the CDs. I doubt any are available as mp3s.
i'm currently considering adding the piano sonatas to my repetoire. more flavour i guess.
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Me? A Piano-monkey? I'm not good enough to be one. - Dazzer's thoughts on piano monkeys. The last recording i did was Etude in A Flat. It would have sounded better in A Hall though. ------------------