Given Hindemith’s awareness of sometimes centuries-old traditions when writing his own music, it was almost inevitable that he should compose a Mass. The wonder is that it took him so long to get round to doing so, and he barely made it in time – dying in 1963, just six weeks after the first performance, having begun sketching a second. His tardiness can partly be explained by his view that Palestrina had had the last word with the Mass as a musical form; there seem not to have been any dogmatic considerations, even though his wife was a converted Catholic. What is more important is the quality of the music, irrespective of why he wrote it. If not quite capturing the spirit of the missal, the Mass is still an evocative, exploratory setting, proving – as with the Organ Concerto of the previous year – that he was far from being a spent force.
Uwe Gronostay obviously has an affection for this work in particular, given that he has recorded it twice in as many years for two separate companies. There is little to choose between the two performances, both being beautifully sung and shaped, qualities that are evident in the rest of each programme. Nor, indeed, are the couplings much help in the selection process, since the Mass is the sole duplication. Both discs contain six of the 12 deeply felt Madrigals Hindemith composed in 1958. I have to say that I would have preferred all 12 to be recorded together, and do not find the early Lieder nach alten Texten (1923) on Chandos a sufficient makeweight, delightful though they are. Globe offer more in the lovely Rilke Chansons (1939) and the four male choruses, written between 1929 and 1939 to words by Whitman, Gottfried Benn (librettist of Hindemith’s oratorio Das Unaufhorliche), Holderlin and Nietzsche. Chandos’s sound is fuller, but Globe’s is still very good. If you want just one disc of Hindemith’s a cappella choral music, then go for Globe; but the Mass is worth having twice for its own sake, let alone in completing the Madrigal set.'