Paul Hindemith’s The Harmony of the World, a symphony in three movements (Musica Instrumentalis, Musica Humana, and Musica Mondana) drawn from his still-unrecorded opera of the same title, celebrates the idea of music as the ordering principle of creation. As such it benefits enormously from concentrated listening, so that we can discern its structural models (such as the final passacaglia) and layered approach to orchestration (the casual ear can easily get lost in Hindemith’s dense harmonic forest). The task is made easier here by Karl Anton Rickenbacher’s penetrating conducting, which makes all the motivic strands audible without checking the music’s flow. On a competing disc (Chandos) with the BBC Philharmonic, Yan Pascal Tortelier takes a slightly more urgent approach; Rickenbacher’s is closest to Herbert Blomstedt’s on his excellent recent Decca recording. Tortelier’s band doesn’t produce as rich and craggy a sound as either the Bamberg Symphony or Blomstedt’s Gewandhaus Orchestra; otherwise, there’s little to choose between versions. All three bring the work off handsomely, and we’re lucky to have such a relative abundance of choice.
Perhaps the couplings will determine your preference. Both Blomstedt and Tortelier offer the Sinfonia Serena. In contrast, Rickenbacher features a delightful rarity. In 1949 the Louisville Orchestra commissioned Hindemith to compose a symphony, and the result was the Sinfonietta in E, which, though it contains some “jazzy” syncopations in the first movement, is primarily based on Renaissance and Baroque forms. Rickenbacher and the Bambergers exploit Hindemith’s marvelous contrapuntal writing to thrilling effect, and special mention must be made of the woodwind section, here giving virtuoso performances from every chair. Koch’s clear and powerful recording, made in 1992 (1995 for the Sinfonietta) sounds as fine as any made today, no doubt due to the modern high resolution disc mastering technology. It’s not clear why Koch waited so long to release this recording, but no matter–we have it now, and it’s terrific.
