Abstract
On the occasion of the premiere of Hindemith’s opera “Cardillac”, this chamber concert presents three central works of wind chamber music of the 20th century. The “Septet for Wind Instruments” illustrates Hindemith’s stylistic shift from the 1930s onward - away from the cheeky experimentation of his earlier creative period toward more traditional forms and compositional techniques. The finale, however, has a specific biographical background: above a double fugue the old Bernese “Bear March”, which Hindemith became acquainted with during his years of exile in Switzerland. A transfigured act of remembrance is Leoš Janáček’s “Suite for Wind Sextet ‘Mládí’” (“Youth”). The 70-year-old composer wrote it in 1924 while working on the opera “The Makropulos Affair”, which revolves around the idea of eternal youth. Alexander von Zemlinsky’s short “Humoresque” for wind quintet - a commissioned work for schools - is the final composition by this influential pioneer of modernism, who died impoverished in exile in New York in 1942.