Paul Hindemith - Suite 1922 [With score]

-Composer: (16 November 1895 – 28 December 1963)
-Performer: Sviatoslav Richter
-Recorded in 1989

Suite 1922, for piano, Op. 26, written in 1921-22

00:00 - I. Marsch
01:36 - II. Shimmy
04:54 - III. Nachtstück
11:44 - IV. Boston
18:04 - V. Ragtime

Whereas in the Kleine Kammermusik of 1921 Hindemith chuckled good-naturedly about such shopworn forms as marches and waltzes, in the 1922 Suite for solo piano, his attitude toward the march, shimmy, Boston and ragtime is more plainly bad-tempered. In the years immediately following the First World War, Hindemith had been privately composing pastiches of popular dances of the day, but had held them back from publication, considering them mere "sports." By 1922, however, Hindemith no longer had any qualms about using popular music as a basis for serious musical statements.

In Suite "1922", satire borders on sarcasm; in the opening "Marsch," the pianist is instructed to play it "rather clumsily." The writing for the piano is unusually thick and heavy with chords, especially in the left hand; as such it is almost unrecognizable as coming from one of the master contrapuntalists of the twentieth century. The rhythm is irregular, and the harmonies -- built on dissonant, cluster-like explosions and angular aggregations of fourths and fifths -- make for a very unmarchable march indeed.

The other dance forms are similarly undermined in the suite. The second movement, "Shimmy," is based on a dance-hall variant of the foxtrot, but makes only occasional allusions to the form, spending most of its time musing on a dour, ambiguously harmonized theme. The central "Nachtstück" anticipates Hindemith's serious and contemplative mature style -- harmonically quite dark in this instance; the central section is ethereal, with haunting motives drifting about in the upper range of the keyboard. It is succeeded by an equally unsettled "Boston" -- an old American dance with similarities to the waltz. Repeated attempts to establish the requisite triple-time drift instead into tonally ambiguous (albeit fascinating) meditations. For the "Ragtime" finale, Hindemith instructs the pianist to play wildly but in strict rhythm, and to "[r]egard the piano here as an interesting percussion instrument." Dissonance reaches its maximum intensity in this loud and disturbing movement.

In 1940, Hindemith wrote to Hugo Strecker, "I think it is not necessary to reprint that awful Suite '1922'.... The piece is really not an honorable ornament in the music-history of our time, and it depresses an old man rather seriously to see that just the sins of his youth impress the people more than his better creations." That it continued to impress listeners, however, amply demonstrates its intrinsic value.
[allmusic.com]