Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith's music for saxophones, in original works and in new arrangements, played by the Berlin quartet clair-obscur. The two original pieces with saxophone, the Trio op. 47 (1928) and the Konzertstück for two alto saxophones (1933), sit next to the Sonata for alto horn (1943) in its alternative version for alto saxophone. Then come five pieces from other scorings, arranged for saxophone quartet by the ensemble's tenor saxophonist Christoph Enzel for this production. The arrangements are first recordings.

Hindemith was born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, on 16 November 1895 and died in Frankfurt on 28 December 1963. In the 1920s he fell for the sound of the saxophone and used it several times in the scores of his stage works. The quartet here is Maike Krullmann, Kathi Wagner, Jan Schulte-Bunert and Enzel, whose members regularly form the saxophone section of the Berliner Philharmoniker. They are joined by the violist Barbara Buntrock and the pianists Robert Kolinsky and Florian von Radowitz. The disc was recorded on 9-12 May and 14 July 2016 in Saal III of the Haus des Rundfunks in Berlin, co-produced with Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg and produced by Andreas Göbel.

The Trio op. 47 is scored for piano, viola and heckelphone or tenor saxophone, and the saxophone option is taken here. The Sonata for four horns (1952), which opens the programme, is heard here on four saxophones. Des kleinen Elektromusikers Lieblinge (1930) is a suite of seven short movements. The lighter side of Hindemith closes the disc: Frankenstein's Monstre Repertoire (1938), barely more than a minute long, and two numbers from Minimax, his "Repertorium für Militärorchester" of 1923 for string quartet. These are Wasserdichter und Vogelbauer and Alte Karbonaden.

The saxophone came late to the classical orchestra, and clair-obscur has made a point of widening its repertoire. Beside the original literature the quartet plays arrangements of piano music and string quartets, so a Hindemith programme of this kind follows naturally from its work. The disc belongs to Wergo's Edition Paul Hindemith.

CD, Wergo WER 7353 2, released in 2017, with a 25-page booklet in German and English.