Opera no 148
Hindemith: Sancta Susanna
Soloists
BBC Philharmonic
Yan Pascal Tortelier
The image I have of Hindemith is as a composer of worthy music for a huge variety of instruments who could produce music by the yard on an almost production line basis. It all seems rather dull.
But there is another side to the composer. In his early days he had a rebellious spirit as shown in this, one of three short operas from the 1920s. It caused something of a scandal at the time, largely because of the subject matter - unsavoury goings on in a nunnery. Although the music certainly wasn’t dry aa dust I found it rather uninspiring - it seemed to use the cliches of the expressionist composers of the 1920s with no real distinction. Only the last few minutes (the whole thing is over in less than 25 mins) came to life with some quite intensive music as the opera reaches its climax. But this was not the work for me.
