Paul Hindemith - Piano Sonata No. 1 "Der Main"

Описание: Composer: Paul Hindemith (16 November 1895 -- 28 December 1963)
Performer: Anatoly Vedernikov
Year of recording: 1965

Piano Sonata No. 1 in A major "Der Main", written in 1936.

00:00 - I. Ruhig bewegte Viertel
01:57 - II. Im Zeitmass eines sehr langsamen Marsches
08:56 - III. Lebhaft
14:54 - IV. Ruhig bewegte Viertel, wie im ersten Teil
16:56 - V. Lebhaft

Hindemith rarely spoke about his own music, but in a prefatory note, he credits "Der Main", a poem by the 19th-century German poet, Friedrich Hölderlin, for providing the inspiration for the First Piano Sonata. In it, the poet dreams about an idealized ancient Greece, a land once ringing with songs and dances of a happy, highly civilized people on the shores of the blue Aegean, but now in ruins, devastated by wars and oppression:

"Then wander he must
From strangers to strangers, and
The earth, free, must, alas,

Serve him as his fatherland, as long as he lives.
And when he dies - yet never shall I forget you,
However far I wander, fair River Main!, and
Your banks, so delightful.

In hospitality, proud one, you accepted me
And brightened a stranger's eye,
And quietly gliding songs
You taught me and how to live in silence."

Without being overt programme music the sonata expresses the feeling of its inspiration. The "Still hingleitende Gesänge" (quietly gliding songs) of the poem are songs of introversion and melancholy, a direct reaction to the depressing political circumstances of the time, reflected in the first and fourth movements. The second movement was originally a set of variations. The pianist Walter Gieseking , after a brief inspection of the sonata, with the second of the group, played it through to the publisher, who was delighted by both works, of which Gieseking intended to give the first performance in Germany, if political circumstances had not intervened. He was unable, however, to conceal his doubts about the meditative and complex variation movement. In its place Hindemith wrote a stirring slow march. The following movement is quick, a kind of scherzo, leading to a final fourth movement that recalls the first, a framework in arch-form.