Marek Janowski reviews

Hindemith is sometimes dismissed as a drily academic composer, and it’s true that his vast output is uneven in quality. Yet at its best his music could be dazzlingly inventive, as it is in the three pieces recorded here. Two of them were written for virtuoso American orchestras – the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber for the New York Philharmonic, and the Concert Music for Strings and Brass for Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

This box set is a trip down memory lane, with flexible and attractive packaging, and above all a full text in German and English, and a long and stimulating introductory essay. Marek Janowski presents Humperdinck’s masterpiece with a light touch, very much as he did his complete Wagner series, but much more appropriately. Tempos are on the rapid side, a welcome change from the heavy-handed efforts of some recent stagings and recordings of the opera.