It’s not looking good. The weather that is. I have tickets to see the Metropolitan Opera’s season-opening new production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold – the start of their big new Ring cycle directed by Robert LePage – tomorrow night, but it’s supposed to rain. That matters because my tickets for this beyond-sold-out performance are for seats on the plaza in front of the Met to watch the opera on a big screen. Getting soaked during a production of Rheingold makes a certain artistic sense, given all the water that courses through the opera, but that might be a little too much realism for me. We’ll have to wait and see.

For now, a late night blog to further push the cause of Paul Hindemith. In the spring I wrote about Riccardo Muti’s potent performance with the New York Philharmonic of the composer’s Symphony in E flat; and two days ago I heard my client Alan Gilbert conduct a dazzling performance with that same orchestra of the Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber. It was a morning concert, and the finale from the Symphonic Metamorphosis played in my head straight into Saturday morning, at which point I listened to most of the Hindemith CDs that are housed in our place in the country. 

Over and over again, the magnificent sound of Hindemith’s scores blew me away. I was particularly moved by the luminous brilliance of his Mathis der Maler Symphony and the Noblissima Visione, both heard in a fine recording by Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic (I heard the latter on my iPhone during a country jog and snapped a picture of incipient autumn along the way). Reading the liner-notes reminded me of the extraordinary backdrop for the premiere of Mathis in 1934. Hitler had just taken power in Germany, and while the work was a success in the hands of Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic, the music immediately met with the disdain of the Nazi regime – for 'Cultural Bolshevism' no less – and Hindemith was forced at first into inner exile and ultimately – along with his Jewish wife – into leaving Germany. 

As the weekend came to a close I dropped a note to Alan thanking him for the thrilling performance and reiterating my hope that he would do more Hindemith with the Philharmonic (I love Harmonie der Welt on record – Blomstedt has a terrific performance on Decca, and there’s another fine one by Tortelier on Chandos – and it’s one of those works that I’ve most hoped to hear live). Re-reading the concert dates on Alan’s 2010-11 season news release, I actually noticed another Hindemith score – the Horn Concerto – on a program in late December, so that’s already something to look forward to.

I don’t have access to any data that would suggest otherwise, but from my own experience attending lots of concerts in New York I can safely say that Hindemith’s best scores are not receiving anywhere near the attention they deserve. My only previous Hindemith experience in New York was a triple bill of Hindemith one-act operas that Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra gave a while back. A Facebook follower of Gramophone named Scott Rose wrote a note that he posted as a comment on my last blog, which had made reference to a Hindemith book I had picked up on Portland. I don’t think he’d mind me quoting him on the subject of the composer’s continuing neglect: 

'Hindemith is more vulnerable than better composers to mediocre performances of his works. It likely is true that in terms of sheer greatness, he will never hold a candle to Bartók. Yet the most luminous performances of his best compositions persuade that he was more than the mere diligent craftsman some of his detractors would have you believe him to have been.' Thanks for that, Scott!

For now I’ll set the future of Hindemith’s music aside, and focus instead on my own conflicting feelings about tomorrow: we really need the rain, but the people planning to watch Rheingold on Lincoln Center Plaza – not to mention on the Jumbotron in Times Square – wouldn’t mind waiting for it an extra day.