Perhaps one of these days someone will reunite the Hindemith with all its original Weber sources. But full marks to Chandos for going at least part of the way and besides, only one of themes in question actually originated from a Weber orchestral work (the rest were keyboard): and that's the insidious little Turandot tune. Weber first came across it in Rousseau's Dictionnaire de musique (1768) whilst researching his incidental music for a production of the Gozi play. He quite clearly couldn't get it out of his head. For his miniature Overture and March, he sets it like a kind of repeating tape-loop, tossing off the odd variational adjustment along the way but generally contenting himself with embellishments to the orchestral garb.
Hindemith has rather more fun with it in his celebrated Turandot scherzo: the syncopated fugue, for one thing, is an inspired idea which I can't help feehng Jarvi and his orchestra might have enjoyed a little more—with more of a jazy shrug in the laid-back brass writing; more a sense of growing audacity all round. Earlier, we might, for instance, have heard more of the demented trills alternating between horns and trumpets, but full marks to the percussion department and timpanist in particular. Chandos have ensured they are crisply defined with a vivid, natural sense of perspective. And elsewhere, Jarvi's rendition is splendid: a sturdy, resilient opening allegro building to a brash military close; a charming siciliano with graceful flute obbligato (all the woodwind playing is of a high order here); a suitably Hindemithian Marsch with one notable surge as massed strings take up the tune—though the horns might have given even more when they come to shout it at the close.
The four Weber overtures are boldly sounded, with festive fiery brass and, once again, crisp emphatic timps. Jarvi has a good ear for fantasy: the ghostly central largo of Euryanthe with its eight muted violins and tremolando violas, stills the air; the lovely pastorale for four dewy horns opening Der Freischutz is most affecting. And of course, there is the theatricality—Weber's 'subversive' surprises, all of them well placed and almost unexpected, even to those of us who know them: the furious upsurge of strings at the close of Freischutz; the fortissimo thwack announcing Oberon's allegretto con fuoco—which Jarvi's allegro most certainly is. He really does full justice, too, to Oberon's lovely lyric tune, though if I were to caro I would ask what happened to the brief but telling chromatic horn descant against the final statement of the vaulting violin tune—something I would have expected Jarvi to bring out. He brings out so much else.
Couplings might sway your choice for the Hindemith. I marginally prefer Jarvi to Blomstedt (Decca) but he offers substantial accompanying Hindemith in the shape of the Mathis der Maler Symphony and Trauermusik—again, brilliantly recorded. Szell is still incomparable in the Symphonic Metamorphosis. A CD reissue soon, please, EMI.'