VIDEO
I first heard Hindemith's Sonata for clarinet and piano on the album "20th Century Classics for Clarinet and Piano" by the great American clarinetist David Shifrin and pianist William Doppmann. I found it a very interesting work, perhaps without the overwhelming charm of other great works for clarinet and piano such as those by Brahms, Debussy, Poulenc, etc. but I always wanted to study it and offer it in concert. Above you can watch the video of my recording with the pianist Mohamed Shams.
Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) was a German composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He is considered one of the most influential composers of the first half of the 20th century; his creative contribution ranges from musical expressionism to neoclassicism, and his very big catalog includes all musical genres. Despite the stylistic changes in Hindemith's career, there are a number of elements that persist at all stages: the contrapuntal character of his music, the use of chromatic and modal melodies, the use of ancient musical forms (variation, passacaglia, fugue, baroque sonata, etc.), the rejection of thematic development, cyclical forms and other formal resources typical of the 19th century, the use of a rhythmic pattern of a regular and constant character, a vigorous sound and great craftsmanship in the use of instruments, chamber groups and the orchestra.
Between 1935 and 1943, Paul Hindemith devoted much of his energy to composing sonatas for a wide variety of orchestral instruments. The most fruitful of these years was 1939, in which he wrote six sonatas, including the Clarinet Sonata, which he completed in just eight days! Hindemith was perhaps the leading German composer of his generation, and today he is recognized not only for his extensive compositional output but also for his important contributions as a theoretician and teacher. Indeed, thanks to his professorship of composition at Yale University between 1945 and 1953, he exerted a lasting influence on a generation of young American composers in the middle of the century. In his book "The Craft of Musical Composition" (1945), Hindemith defends his commitment to tonal harmony and, in particular, the importance of the major triad, which he argued was a fact of nature that a composer could not he could escape more than a painter could with primary colors.
Hindemith not only rejected contemporary practices such as atonality and serialism, but also rejected the intellectual complexities and esotericism common to many contemporary works during the post-Webern era. Instead, he promoted the concept of Gebrauchsmusik: music with a purpose, like teaching, in contrast to "art for art's sake".
The Sonata for clarinet and piano by Hindemith, although it does not pretend to be a didactic composition per se, is a basic work of the clarinet repertoire. Structured in four movements, it is built (like many of Hindemith's works) on harmonies of perfect fourth intervals that usually resolve into major triads. This sonata allows the virtuoso and expressive vocal possibilities of the clarinet together with its different shades and colors. The piano is an equally important companion, expressing every nuance from dialogue to tense altercation.
The opening movement's three-note rising motif in fourths (Mässig bewegt) sets the overall mood of the piece and proves to be a presage of the strong motivic development that will permeate the sonata's four movements. The second movement (Lebhaft), a dancing scherzo repeats the rising three-note motif, though now a third instead of a fourth, alternating with a recurring dotted rhythmic figure, in the style of a march. The clarinet can exploit its wide range of color effects from the low to the high register. Undoubtedly, the weight of the sonata lies in its enormous third movement (Sehr langsam), which occupies more than a third of the complete work. Here, Hindemith combines his characteristic German earnestness with some of his most engaging, eloquent, and persuasive melodic writing of his entire compositional output, particularly with regard to the melancholic, expressive melodic phrase in the last eight bars that brings the movement to a touching end. The innocuous final movement (Kleines Rondo) is rather a disappointment after the powerful Sehr langsam, and seems to lack the degree of sophistication and craftsmanship of the other movements within this otherwise remarkable work.