Sébastien Hurtaud graduated with the highest awards from a number of world-leading international music schools: the Paris Schola Cantorum (class of Erwan Fauré), the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (class of Jean-Marie Gamard), the Southern Methodist University, Dallas (class of Andrés Diaz), the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester (class of Karina Georgian), and the Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatoire (class of Michel Strauss). He and Pamela Hurtado studied chamber music with Réna Shereshevskaya. He received first prize at the Adam International Competition in 2009, and awards at the Naumburg Foundation Competition in 2008, and the Aldo Parisot International Competition in 2007. He began his public career at the age of twelve and has appeared in recitals and concerts in Europe, the United States, South Korea, Japan, and New Zealand, winning for himself an international reputation. He has collaborated with distinguished colleagues and appeared as a soloist and chamber musician in many international festivals, concert halls and concert tours. On this recording he plays the “Gofriller” Stephan von Baehr cello, which is on loan to him.

Pamela Hurtado graduated with distinction from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique and the Cortot Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris where she studied with Réna Shereshevskaya. In 2008, as a Fulbright Award winner, she graduated with an artist diploma at the Southern Methodist University, Dallas, in the class of Joachin Achucarro. She has worked with soloists and composers including Henri Dutilleux and Philippe Hersant, and has been a prizewinner in international piano competitions including the San Sebastian Competition in Spain, the Montrond Competition in France, and the Santa Fe World Competition. She is active as a soloist in France, the United States and throughout Europe, and performs in chamber music with many soloists and in particular with Sébastien Hurtaud. The Japanese television channel NHK devoted a programme to the history of their partnership, which began at the Prades Pablo Casals Festival.

Respected as one of the most distinguished viola players of his time, Hindemith devoted the earlier part of his career to performance, first as a violinist and then as a viola player in the Amar-Hindemith Quartet, while developing his powers as a composer and his distinctive theories of harmony and of the place of the composer in society. His name is particularly associated with the concept of Gebrauchsmusik, and the composer as craftsman. He was prolific in composition and wrote music in a variety of forms. Attacked by the National Socialists, he left his native Germany in 1935, taking leave from the Berlin Musikhochschule where he had served as professor of composition for some eight years. In 1940 he settled in the United States, teaching at Yale University, a position he combined after the War with a similar position at the University of Zurich. He died in his native city of Frankfurt in 1963.

Operas and Stage Works

Hindemith found himself in open conflict with the National Socialist government of Germany in 1934 with his opera Mathis der Maler, the banning of which brought about the resignation of the conductor Furtwängler from his official positions. He derived a symphony of the same title from the opera. The dance legend Nobilissima visione, based on the life of St Francis of Assisi and first performed in London in 1938, is better known in occasional instrumental excerpts, although there is a concert suite from the work.

Orchestral Music

In addition to the ‘Mathis der Maler’ Symphony, the Symphonic Metamorphoses after Themes by Carl Maria von Weber is in general repertoire. Hindemith wrote concertos for various solo instruments. Of these the concertos for his own instrument, the viola, are notable, in particular the attractive Der Schwanendreher (‘The Swan-Drover’), based on folksongs, and Kammermusik No. 5 for viola and chamber orchestra.

Chamber Music

Among the various duo sonatas written by Hindemith, some of those for violin and piano and for viola and piano are of particular interest. The sonata repertoire provided for tuba, double bass, horn, harp, trumpet, viola d’amore, cor anglais and other instruments is of interest, as are the three organ sonatas.

Piano Music

Apart from his three piano sonatas and sonatas for two pianos and for piano duet, Ludus tonalis is Hindemith’s most ambitious work for piano – a set of fugues and interludes through the keys, in the manner of J.S. Bach, preceded by an introduction that is inverted in the conclusion.