(2026) HINDAMARS

2026-04-30T11:35:42+02:00

Trilogy

Our focused work on rare or previously unpublished repertoire connected to World War II – a pivotal period in the history of music and the lives of composers – has resulted in two acclaimed recordings: In memoriam Pavel Haas VDE Gallo 1426 and At the Heart of the 20th Century, Claves 1810.

After exploring Central European and French composers, we now turn to the Germanic sphere in this third, carefully crafted album. The possibility of continuing to create music during the rise of the Brown Plague, and the experience of exile – be it in the USA, Switzerland, the USSR or Palestine – are the major themes underlying this programme which completes our trilogy. The notion of ‘degenerate music’, as defined by the Nazi regime at the 1938 Düsseldorf exhibition, applies both to Hindemith’s modernism and to the early days of jazz, that so-called ‘Negro’ music that flourished in Paris and Weimar-era Berlin.

Hindemith’s forced exile in 1939

Hindemith explored the sonata form in an extraordinary manner throughout some twenty works, experimenting with various instrumental combinations, and showing a particular fondness for less commonly used wind instruments. His sonatas for oboe (1938) and English horn (1941) mark the years preceding his departure for Switzerland and subsequently the United States. As a prominent German modernist composer during the Weimar Republic, Hindemith and his opera Mathis der Maler became focal points in debates over the role of art under Nazism. Supported by Furtwängler for his defence of artistic freedom, yet immediately blacklisted by Goebbels and considered too conservative by Weill and Brecht – with whom he had nevertheless composed the radio play The Lindbergh Flight – Hindemith took advantage of his international fame as a soloist and teacher to flee the regime, settling first in the United States and later back in Switzerland.

During a concert he attended at New York’s Cotton Club, Hindemith, himself an incredibly gifted musician (concertmaster of the Frankfurt Orchestra, violist with the Amar Quartet, organiser of the Donaueschingen Festival, and the first composer to sign an exclusive contract with the prestigious Schott publishers in Mainz for his entire body of work) – marvelled at the talent of the jazz musicians:

“Three hours of music featuring the wildest things I’ve ever heard, trumpets running riot, a veritable orgy of rhythm and sound where everything proceeds with incredible virtuosity”.

Schulhoff, a genius struck down by Nazism

A Jew, a homosexual and a communist, Schulhoff died of tuberculosis in 1942 whilst still attempting to compose symphonies in Nazi prisons. This Czech virtuoso pianist was introduced to Dvořák as a child prodigy and his compositional talent was recognised by both Reger and Debussy, from whom he took lessons. He was forever marked by his experiences as a soldier in the First World War. Like Hindemith – whose father died in the war before he himself was called to the front – Schulhoff was driven to a certain aesthetic radicalism by the absurdity and unspeakable violence of these battles. He met the painter and caricaturist George Grosz while on the front and joined the Dada movement with him in 1918. He composed the first work consisting entirely of rests nearly thirty years before Cage, and set the Communist Manifesto to music. Like Hindemith in Donaueschingen, he programmed the music of Berg, Schoenberg and Webern in the Atelier de la musique nouvelle: a series of concerts he launched in Dresden in the 1920s. Having played jazz and translated it into his own compositional idiom since 1919, he responded to a commission from Kurt Weill for one of Berlin’s first subscription radio stations by composing his Hot-Sonate in 1930. Originally written for an F saxophone, it lends itself particularly well to an adaptation for the English

horn, which is also pitched in F. Schulhoff took Soviet citizenship following the 1938 Munich Agreement. His love of jazz, the only form of music he could continue to practise clandestinely, and his strong ties to the early days of radio broadcasting, for which he worked in Ostrava and Brno until his imprisonment, set him apart as a highly original composer with a diverse and flamboyant output.

Josef Tal, exile in Palestine

A demanding teacher and rigorous theorist, Hindemith spent his life passing on his love for the art of sound. Josef Tal was one of his students, along with many others in pre-war Berlin. Sensing that the tide of history was turning, he emigrated to Palestine under the British Mandate in 1934. Trained as an oboist at Fritz Flemming’s renowned German school, he composed a sonata for his favourite instrument after the war, which remains unpublished. It clearly references Hindemith through the use of themes in fourths, a solid arched structure in one movement, and a strict yet richly colourful style of writing. The oboe line also evokes the chanting style favoured in the synagogue by the composer’s father, a rabbi who was deported and killed by the Nazis. Tal achieved success and produced an impressive body of work that blossomed with the establishment of the State of Israel: four operas, six symphonies, avant-garde pieces incorporating electronics, and three string quartets. He was involved with all the major Israeli musical institutions and became a leading musical figure in this new nation.

Jazz and contemporary music

As we did with Bruno Giner and Philippe Hersant for the two previous albums, we asked a contemporary composer to share his insights on this project. We commissioned a new piece for our duo from Marc Perrenoud, a magnificent jazz pianist born in Berlin, deeply involved in the Swiss music scene and son of a renowned principal oboist with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.

Fabrice Ferez
Translated from French by Michelle Bulloch – Musitext

***

Hindamars

Hindemith is on Mars. Or rather, his music is…Paul Hindemith wrote several theoretical works, notably Unterweisung im Tonsatz, several chapters of which could be summarised as: understanding music through nature. Here, the focus is most often on physical laws that can be explained through mathematics. I imagined Hindamars as if Martian gravity, weaker than Earth’s, were stretching the intervals cherished by the composer. These patterns are then used as raw material. This results in ethereal, open melodies in a short piece that is red, warm and rhythmic.

Blue Hope

Blue Hope depicts a hypothetical encounter between Hindemith and Schulhoff…The latter’s ‘blue notes’ emerge from the woodwinds and take on an impressionistic quality, as if Ravel occasionally appeared in an old bistro to place a few appetisers on the table.

Hope is the prevailing feeling throughout the piece. A hope inevitably embodied by Schulhoff’s resilience. Despite a life fraught with painful obstacles, he never ceased to produce fascinating works such as these 5 Études de jazz, written in 1926, to which Blue Hope pays tribute.

Les Trois Tours

Emblem of the city of Prague, this piece draws on thematic material from Hindamars and Blue Hope within an ‘East-West’ dynamic inspired by Hindemith’s American period (1940–1953), the stability it embodies, and the subversion of an avant-garde, Dadaist and persecuted Schulhoff.

Towers anchored to the ground alternately convey a sense of grounding on the strong beats, contrasting with the fragility of airy, syncopated elements that express explosions barely controlled yet radiant. A fire appears several times, illuminating the scene with varying intensities through an Iberian motif: as if, at times, Manuel de Falla were coming to catch up with the world…

Marc Perrenoud
Translated from French by Michelle Bulloch - Musitext

MARC PANTILLON

Born into a well-known family of musicians in the Neuchâtel area, pianist Marc Pantillon naturally started studying piano at a very early age with his parents; he in fact had no other teacher until he passed his teaching diploma at the age of twenty. Granted a Migros scholarship, he furthered his piano studies in Vienna with Hans Petermandl at the Hochschule für Musik, obtaining his concert diploma in 1983. He was fortunate enough to further his training with the great pianist Paul Badura-Skoda, who took an interest in him, encouraging him seriously to consider a career as soloist, to which the starting block was the Soloist Prize of the Swiss Musicians Association in 1987. Since then he has performed very frequently, in recitals as well as a soloist with orchestra, and is also in great demand as a chamber musician. Marc Pantillon also has given much of his energy to teaching, both at the Neuchâtel-Geneva HEM and the Lausanne HEMU. As for discography, Marc Pantillon had the chance to record neglected composers that his curiosity led him to investigate, such as Stephen Heller (Claves CD 9805), Ignaz Lachner (Claves CD 9802-3) and Mel Bonis (complete works for flute and piano with his daughter Anne-Laure). This did not prevent him from recording great classics that were close to his heart, such as Brahms (Claves CD 2519/20) and Beethoven (Claves CD 2914/15). Passionate about botany and ornithology, Marc Pantillon has settled in Môtiers, in the Neuchâtel mountains, for the quality of life offered by nature and countryside as yet preserved, whose forests have probably hardly altered since the days when Jean-Jacques Rousseau collected plants there…

pantillon.net

FABRICE FEREZ

Fabrice Ferez is principal oboe in the Victor Hugo Franche Comté Orchestra, oboe teacher at the Greater Besançon Conservatoire and Artistic co-Director of the TETRAKTYS Ensemble. An insatiable chamber music player, arranger, and occasional conductor and composer, he likes to live and to share music of all kinds.

After studying the oboe in the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Lyon, Fabrice Ferez joined the Mozart Academies in Prague and Cracow where he attended Maurice Bourgue’s lessons for the oboe and Sandor Vegh’s classes on chamber music.

As a member of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, he played under Bernard Haitink and Claudio Abbado. He then performed with different ensembles including the orchestra of the Paris National Opera, the Lyon National Orchestra, the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra and the Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra.

His discography reflects his enthusiasm for chamber music, including as it does works for wind trios by composers from central Europe and a CD dedicated to Schubert and Beethoven. He was also the instigator of a research project on the composer Napoléon Coste, aiming to rediscover the output for oboe and guitar of this romantic virtuoso from Franche Comté who had sunk into oblivion. This effort resulted in a recording in 2009. As Artistic Co-Director of the TETRAKTYS ensemble, he has recorded the Quintet for Piano and Winds by Mozart, the Phantasy Quartet by Britten as well as works for Quintet and wind trio by Sir Malcolm Arnold. His recent complete works of Telemann’s Fantasias, together with personal transcriptions of Bach’s Sonatas and partita for violin (including the famous Chaconne), have been hailed by the critics. In 2005, in his home département of Drôme, he founded the Festival of the Chapels of Royans Vercors. He continues to run it, always looking for new types of concerts.

An enthusiasm for contemporary music has led him to play regularly the great compositions of today for his instrument, including works by Holliger, Carter, Berio, Lutosławski, Harvey, Chen and Amy. His repertoire also features the new generation of composers with Au bleu bois by Misato Mochizuki (2000). Two composers have written specially for him. In 2013 Bruno Giner composed Trois silences déchirées for him, and in 2016 Philippe Hersant wrote Shehnaï for him.

Interested in conducting since he was 19, he conducted the Ensemble Orchestral Lyon-Région from 1994 to 2000 and the Orchestre Universitaire de Franche-Comté from 1998 to 2005 and was the Musical Director of the Besançon Philharmonic Orchestra from 2001 to 2014.

He also composes whenever he can. He created Nachtstück for woodwind and cello at the Festival Lyonnais du Grame, Musiques en scène and Vamos, a melodrama for eight wind instruments, narrator and children’s choir at the Flaine festival. In 2018 the Conservatoire in Dole commissioned him to write Lune for children’s choir, organ and oboe, and Myriam Rignol gave the first performance of his Leçon de mots for viola da gamba in 2019. La orilla del mar has just been premiered by Isabelle Druet and the Victor Hugo Franche Comté Orchestra (2022). His latest work, Trois rêves de Georgette, is a musical tale inspired by the life of Telemann. His works are released by Artchipel publishing company. His desire to pass on his love of music - and of the oboe - to future generations has resulted in master classes in China, Slovenia, Germany and Switzerland. Fabrice Ferez has been building his artistic career for over twenty years thanks to the expertise of the teams and the unique qualities of Buffet Crampon instruments (Virtuose and Prestige models).

pantillon.net/fabrice.html