Rudolf Hindemith

Rudolf Hindemith (since 1951 officially Paul Quest , pseudonym Hans Lofer ; born January 9, 1900 in Frankfurt am Main ; † October 7, 1974 near Munich ) was a German composer and conductor with roots in Silesia , as his father came from there. He was mostly overshadowed by his more famous brother Paul , but has been rediscovered in recent years.

Childhood and youth of two unequal brothers

In childhood , the two highly musical brothers Paul and Rudolf were the figureheads of the family. In their youth they began to make music together professionally in the Amar Quartet , one of the leading groups in the new music scene of the 1920s, where Rudolf played the cello . But he soon got out because he often found himself behind Paul and switched to the genre of brass music and jazz . When his brother Paul emigrated from National Socialist Germany to Switzerland in 1938, he stayed in Germany as a conductor . He became the conductor of the symphony orchestra of the General Government in Krakow in southern Poland . This orchestra was a project by Gauleiter Hans Frank , who was later hanged in Nuremberg in 1946 because of his numerous crimes .

Pseudonyms after 1945 and rediscovery

After the Second World War , Rudolf Hindemith led an unsteady life as a composer, conductor and also a teacher and for the above reason avoided using numerous pseudonyms . When he died completely lonely near Munich in 1974 , his gravestone received the inscription "Hans Lofer" - which seemed to close the Rudolf Hindemith chapter.

But in the 1990s, some of his students began to remember him more, even though he was considered a bad and bizarre teacher. A musicologist at the University of Münster, Gerd Brill , published a brochure about the composer Rudolf Hindemith ; an extended mono or biography is in progress. In February 2002 there was even a three-day Hindemith Festival in Bremen , which the local Philharmonic Society dedicated to some piano and chamber music . In addition to a workshop , there was even a world premiere of a piano concerto from the 1960s. In his eccentric way, Rudolf Hindemith titled it as a “ Suite for Piano and Orchestra”.

In another academic work, the pianist Stephanie Timoschek dedicated her diploma thesis in 2005 at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz to the person of Rudolf Hindemith and especially his piano works. Rudolf Hindemith's piano works include 6 dances for piano, 7 sonatinas, 5 piano pieces, 7 preludes and fugues, 13 school fugues, 27 two-part school fugues and a waltz from the opera "Des Kaisers Neue Kleid".

Rudolf Hindemith was married to Prof. Maria Landes-Hindemith (1901–1987) professor at the Musikhochschule in Munich.

Rudolf Hindemith Festival

In a review (see web links) it says: Kolja Lessing as a soloist and George Alexander Albrecht at the conductor's desk of the Philharmonic State Orchestra Bremen presented a very entertaining composition of only 16 minutes, five movements, which is somewhere between bitonality and the neoclassicism of the older brother, reveals the influences of Spanish folklore and jazz and is always characterized by laconic brevity in all different genre and sentence types. Where the older Paul occasionally tends to be pathos, Rudolf's “expression” is as good as nil: he hides behind irony and sarcasm, does not let his innermost part out, disguises himself, jumps from a genre intonation within his extremely short sentences to the contrasting other.

In no way can one say that Rudolf Hindemith is a bad composer or that his music is a “copy”; he reveals a thoroughly amazing originality and a sparkling temperament - within the characteristic limits that corresponded to his personality. This also applies to humorous chamber music such as the one- minute movement for string quartet “Der Spiegel oder Hin und zurück ”, which is only notated up to a sustained chord, because afterwards the music runs back to the beginning ...

Other works

Hindemith started a new edition of some concerts composed by Georg Goltermann in the late 1820s .

• Concerto I. A minor, Opus 14
• Concerto III. B minor, Opus 51 [1829]
• Concerto IV. G major, Opus 65 [1829]
• Concerto VI. D major, Opus 100

See also: twelve-tone music , modern , music school , string quartet , symphony

Sound carrier

• The Dreyer-Gaido label released a 3-CD Rudolf Hindemith Edition between 2003 and 2010 .
• In 2008, Stephanie Timoschek recorded all of her piano works for the first time on two CDs on ORF.
• The Amar Quartet with Rudolf Hindemith on the violoncello can be heard on a CD by the Arbiter company (released 2011).

Web links

• Works by and about Rudolf Hindemith in the catalog of the German National Library

• Cello-piano concerts I – IV and VI

Individual evidence

1. ^ Dreyer Gaido Musikproduktionen, Münster
2. ↑ Hindemith: The Piano Works (page in the ORF Shop)
3. ↑ Hindemith as Interpreter: The Amar Hindemith String Quartet