BBC Proms

Hindemith-Mahler-Bruckner (2010x62)

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Hindemith: Symphony 'Mathis der Maler'. Hindemith’s Symphony ‘Mathis der Maler’ (‘Mathis the Painter’) is often said to have been extracted from his opera of the same name. Certainly the same music appears in both, but the symphony was the earlier work. In 1933, the year of the Nazi seizure of power, Hindemith accepted the suggestion of his publisher Willy Strecker that he should compose an opera based on the life of the Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald (c1475/80–1528), whose real name was Mathis Gothart Nithart. Grünewald’s masterpiece is the set of paintings executed at the beginning of the 16th century on the altar for the hospital of the monastery at Isenheim in Alsace. Now preserved in Colmar, near Strasbourg, this Isenheim altar-piece is well known in Germany as one of the supreme treasures of late German medieval art. Mahler: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (17 mins). Christian Gerhaher: baritone. The Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (‘Songs of a Wayfaring Lad’), composed between 1883 and 1885, left a particularly strong imprint on the roughly contemporary First Symphony. The first verse of the second song, ‘Ging heut’ morgen über’s Feld’, forms the main theme of that symphony’s first movement – and a fair amount of its continuation; while the final verse of the fourth song (beginning ‘Auf der Strasse steht ein Lindenbaum’ – ‘Upon the road there stands a linden tree’) reappears as the Trio section of the First Symphony’s sinister Funeral March. This connection emphasises something the casual reader of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen texts might miss: that the linden tree under which the wandering boy finds peace is a symbol of death. In the song, we have just a couple of bars of the opening funereal tune to cloud the quiet ecstasy of the singer’s final words: ‘All was well again! All! All! Love and sorrow, the world and dreams!’ That opposition – warm, soothing hope one moment, cold emptiness t