Stathis Karapanos – Hindemith Review: Complete Works for Flute

Paul Hindemith was a multi-talented musician, equally successful as a composer, virtuoso viola player, conductor, composer and university lecturer. The quality of his works, of course, is strikingly inadequate to their representation in recordings and concert programmes. The publications on the Ondine label, which now presents the complete works for flute with the Greek flutist Stathis Karapanos, are worth more. These include such famous pieces as the Sonata for Flute and Piano or the Concerto for Woodwinds, Harp and Orchestra, but also occasional pieces such as the Enthusiasm for Flute and Viola, which Hindemith wrote as an example for his students in composition lessons. The interpretive level is consistently very high – both in terms of Karapanos’s ability and that of fellow musicians such as Jörg Widmann and Christoph Eschenbach.

Hindemith: Eight Pieces for Flute Alone, Sonata for Flute, Two Canonical Sonatas for Two Flutes Op. 31/3, Concerto for Woodwinds, Harp and Orchestra, etc.

Stathis Karapanos (flute), Jörg Widmann (clarinet), Stefan Schweigert (bassoon), Céline Moinet (oboe), Marie-Pierre Langlamet (harp), Konzerthaus Kammererchester Berlin, Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, Sayako Kosaka and Christoph Eschenbach (conductor)
Ondine