2nd symphony concert

The choice of a figure like the late-medieval painter Matthias Grünewald clearly held personal significance for Paul Hindemith when he began work on his opera Mathis der Maler (Mathis the painter) in 1933. For, like Grünewald, Hindemith felt that his creative freedom was threatened by his political circumstances. The symphony, composed in parallel with the stage work, places three panels from Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece at the center of the musical narrative. Hindemith depicts the individual’s desperate struggle against the dark side of human depravity with gripping intensity. The reference to Grünewald, who gave up his art to show solidarity with the peasants’ struggle for freedom, caused Hindemith great trouble, which ultimately led to his emigration.

It was “a reflection of a certain seriousness, behind which a cheerful mood often peeks through,” as Robert Schumann himself described his only violin concerto, which he composed in a brief, intense creative frenzy. Yet his mental illness cast an ever-darker shadow over his life—just one year after completing the concerto, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. It was not until 1937 that the work—exploited by the Nazis for propaganda purposes—received its premiere. What hardly anyone knew at the time: it was an edited version by Paul Hindemith. In this concert, it will once again be performed in Schumann’s original version.