Hans Petermandl on Marco Polo has come nearest to a complete survey of Hindemith’s solo piano music (over 90 per cent on four discs). Nimbus’s new selection concentrates on Hindemith’s major mature utterances, including the sonatas for four hands and two pianos (1938 and 1942), omitting anything from before 1930. But in throwing away the 1920s bathwater much of the compositional baby has been thrown out as well. The composer may have looked askance in later years at works like the Dance Pieces or the Suite 1922 but these are as vital to Hindemith’s development as the sonatas – more so than Nos. 1 and 2 – and go some way to explaining his later formal unorthodoxy.
These omissions would not perhaps have mattered so much were the present performances exceptional. They certainly are committed and more than adequate, with every detail captured in bright sound. But Roberts proves less eloquent an advocate in the solo sonatas than Gould, however wayward the latter, or Petermandl, whose experience in this repertoire is very persuasive despite shortcomings in recording quality (Petermandl also plays the First Sonata’s original slow movement as a bonus). While Roberts’s performances are strong in pointing up contrapuntal rigour, too little of the variety and humour of Hindemith’s writing comes through. The wonderful Sonata for two pianos also fails to take wing, unlike the Duet Sonata which is nicely done.
Roberts is at his best in Ludus tonalis, the 25 “studies in counterpoint, tonal organization and piano playing” from 1942. He takes a broad view (nearly two-and-a-half minutes longer than McCabe and one-and-a-half longer than Petermandl), though the emphasis on monumentality is sometimes at the expense of the kaleidoscopic range of expression – as in the spectral sonorities that open the final “Postludium”. McCabe, Roberts and Mustonen are the key players in the Ludus (Petermandl is not quite in the same league, while Richter’s exciting live recording is hampered by indifferent sound); all are equal in clarity and expressive focus but, if the sentiment does not seem too preposterous, McCabe’s interpretation is somehow more humane, perhaps reflecting his composer’s sensibility. (And pace MS, his coupling of the Suite 1922 is rather more apposite than Mustonen’s – Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives.)
My advice is to stick with Gould or Petermandl in the sonatas, McCabe in the Ludus, and wait for an alternative in the works for two pianists.'