12:30pm | Morse Hall at The Juilliard School | New York, NY

Paul Hindemith's Der Schwanendreher viola concerto is the composer's personal manifesto, his business card, his way of saying "This is who I am and this is what I care about" through music. The concerto cryptically encodes Hindemith's emotional state during the years leading up to his emigration from Nazi Germany in 1938. But the piece not only reflects the composer's sociopolitical circumstances at a particular time in history; it also encapsulates every aspect of Hindemith's artistic identity: his violist persona, his teaching persona, his theorist persona, his cultural background, his interest in engaging lay audiences, and his philosophy of music. Although the third movement is labeled as "variations," it unfolds in a much more complex way than this label suggests. The movement's thematic, harmonic, and formal anomalies respond to careful design that reflect Hindemith's philosophy of music. The lecture will conclude with a performance of the third movement of Hindemith's Der Schwanendreher.

P. Hindemith - Variationen "Seid ihr nicht der Schwanendreher?" from Der Schwanendreher

          Miki Aoki, piano