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Artist: Stathis Karapanos
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Stathis Karapanos:

The Complete Works for Flute of Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith had studied violin in Frankfurt am Main, was hired as the concertmaster of the Frankfurt Opera House Orchestra already at the age of nineteen, and performed as a violist and viola d’amore instrumentalist with renowned soloists and orchestras in Germany and foreign countries for many years prior to devoting the last years of his career to conducting. He composed many of his works for his own use during his many years of concert activity.

At the same time, however, from Hindemith’s earliest years onward his interest in composition ranged over a considerably broader spectrum. He wrote a sonata for almost every instrument of the orchestra as well as solo concertos for some of them. Here he succeeded in optimally exploiting the qualities typical of each instrument both in sound and technique because he himself had a command of almost all of them – and of some of them a command on a considerable level. Along with his professional concert activity and the education of future composers, throughout his life Hindemith dedicated himself to an often-neglected area of music culture: the performance of music by amateurs. Even in his last lecture he stated of this: “Conquering the world with sensations is not all that difficult. It is much more difficult to write music for children, for amateur players, for amateur choirs, in short, to produce music for people who can do little or almost nothing musically.”

Accordingly, along with compositions for professional flutists, Hindemith also wrote works for children and adult amateurs in which the flute assumes a leading role. A composition for this instrument sketched on the blackboard is extant from his composition classes.