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Letters from America: 130 years of Hindemith

2025-11-07T10:19:00

Hindemith

To mark the 130th anniversary of Paul Hindemith’s birth, Carlos María Solare delves into the composer and violist’s US years and hears from three leading soloists about what his music means to them

Immigrating to the United States wasn’t on Paul Hindemith’s mind when he first arrived there in April 1937, although his situation in his native Germany had been worsening continuously since the Nazi Party’s seizure of power in 1933. Hitler had been appalled at a performance of Hindemith’s 1929 opera, Neues vom Tage (‘News of the Day’), in which the soprano sings an aria about the convenience of a hot water supply while sitting in the bath. Now Hindemith’s music was condemned as ‘degenerate’, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels publicly denouncing him as an ‘atonal noise-maker’…

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