JAVS Fall 2012

Excerpts from Reviews of Der Schwanendreher

The only drawback is that he is so apt to fill most minutes with 60 seconds’ worth of fiddling—so sharply conscious he seems of their being quite relentlessly unforgiving.

Review from the New York Times , on Friday, April 16, 1937

It is clear that it contains beautiful motives and striking passages; as a whole it seems to us ingenious but often unnecessarily ugly and forced…. Needless to say, this music was played with complete authority by an exceptionally practiced and expert performer upon his instrument. Whether one likes this manner of viola playing is another considera tion. The tone is rough and fibrous. It is big but not sensuous. There is meat in it, but also rasp. There seems no good reason why the tone should not have more smoothness, texture, beauty. Mr. Hindemith could do anything, any way that he pleased with his viola, of which he is past master. There is perhaps a correspondence between the style of the player and the composer, both of whom are brilliantly equipped for their task, and confident and audacious in it. The concerto, expertly written, does not convince this particular pair of ears as music.

Review from Daily Telegraph and Morning Post , England, on Tuesday, December 7, 1937

The best moments in the new work, which is one for people who like their music dry, seemed to be those afforded by a lively fugato in the second movement. Several folksongs are used, but they have suggested to the composer nothing rural or idyllic, but rather, it appears, the ingenious old urban Germany we associ ate with cuckoo-clocks and pedantic learning. In truth, it all appears rather laboriously ingenious, and since the combination of instruments used— viola solo and an orchestra mainly of wind—made inevitably for [opaqueness], we could have done with more of the drollery that had seemed to be promised. The viola solo, so the composer says, rep resents the entertainment provided by a fiddler for “a merry company.” There was something of a school master in this fiddler. Paul Hindemith played the viola in his own new conceit, “Der Schwanendreher.” This three-move ment concerto is based, in a rather pedagogic humour, on four German folk-songs. The work has a scenario: “A fiddler comes among merry company and displays … songs, grave and gay, and … a dance.” With somewhat laborious ingenuity they are treated by way of fugue and variation-form and so forth. But does the treatment spring from their very nature? Or does one feel, once again, that the Hindemith mind functions with such facility that anything is grist to it? Review from Sunday Times , England, on Sunday, December 12, 1937

Review from Musical America , on Sunday, April 25, 1937

To the traditionalist, much of the mere sound of this music is ugly. For the time being, at least, its interest is for the advanced guard, and particularly for the technician, in spite of its apparent straightforward ness and its incorporation of folk material. The per formance had vigor and in the solo part an element of virtuosity, in spite of the prevailing and presum ably deliberate roughness of effect.

Review from Evening News , England, on Tuesday, December 7, 1937

The music, at its athletic best, has the attraction of clever figure-skating. A short, slow movement is pleasantly romantic, in the heart-hiding spirit of to day, but Herr Hindemith is happiest in his quirks and fancies of flirtatious variation.

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