JAVS Fall 2012

letter to the director of the Concertgebouw, Hindemith agreed to November 14, 1935, as the date for the premiere, adding that he was hoping to com plete the score for his opera Mathis der Maler in early August and then start work on his new viola concerto. Rudolf Mengelberg replied to Hindemith on June 28, expressing his enthusiasm at having the premiere of his new viola concerto in Amsterdam and the hope that the work would be completed in time. 10 In Hindemith’s letter to his publisher, Willy Strecker, from June 17 (a week before correspondence with Mengelberg), Hindemith wrote that the score for Mathis der Maler would be completed within the week and then he planned to start his new viola con certo. 11 Perhaps he was trying to buy himself some time and not make false promises to Mengelberg in Amsterdam, or clinging onto the ever-diminishing possibility that the premiere of his new viola concer to might still take place in Germany. This is of course supposition, but since Hindemith was pas sionately patriotic, it would be surprising if he had not wanted to exhaust every avenue to facilitate a German premiere. It seems from extant letters that Hindemith was not sure at the beginning of October if the premiere would actually take place in Amsterdam, and he was still hankering after a Berlin premiere under Furtwängler. A note from Hindemith to Furtwängler concerning the premiere of Der Schwanendreher was returned undelivered to Hindemith via Willy Strecker on October 3. Probably coincidentally, Furtwängler wrote to Gertrud Hindemith on October 7 from Vienna asking if Hindemith would be available to rehearse his new viola concerto on February 7 with performances on February 8 and 9, 1936. Furtwängler further explained to Gertrud that he had concerts at the time with the Vienna Philharmonic and that the directors were in favor of a project with her husband. Furtwängler’s offer was surely intended as an alternate arrangement to Hindemith’s original wish for the premiere to take place in Berlin, knowing that this was an impossibil ity considering the Nazi attitude toward his music. Hindemith finally wrote to Mengelberg confirming the performance of his new viola concerto, Der

Schwanendreher , on October 20, 1935: “I only want ed to quickly tell you that the viola concerto I will play in November will be a premiere. In case you wanted to announce that beforehand. ‘ Der Schwanendreher ’ Concerto for Viola and Small Orchestra based on Old Folk Songs … the publisher will send you the score in the next few days.” 12 The premiere of Der Schwanendreher did take place on November 14, 1935, in Amsterdam with Willem Mengelberg conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Hindemith also conducted his Philharmonisches Konzert directly before performing his viola concerto that night; the concert was broad cast live on radio. Hindemith had only left himself around a month to prepare for the premiere, all while he was hard at work on The Craft of Musical Composition . In a letter to Franz Willms at Schott on November 6, Hindemith wrote that he was working hard on the concerto but that he was aware of the danger of performing one’s own compositions. 13 Two further performances of Der Schwanendreher took place before Hindemith replaced the original ending (which had consisted of the fourth variation transposed into the subdominant with a final repeti tion of the Schwanendreher theme) with a more con vincing and substantial one and gave the first per formance of what is now the definitive version on September 13, 1936, in Venice under Fernando Previtali. 14 Hindemith completed the piano arrangement of the concerto on July 19 and the new version of the con certo within the full score on August 10, 1936. In a letter to his publisher dated August 12, Hindemith wrote: “Here is the final Swan turned with a more detailed and rounded penis of a wild pig, badger, bear … it obviously will not be difficult to add those few pages into the score.” 15 Hindemith gave twenty-nine performances of Der Schwanendreher , with the final rendition in Bern, Switzerland, on August 29, 1939. He never per formed the concerto in Germany, although there were countless blighted plans to do so. On April 12, 1939, Hindemith made the only recording of any of

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