Rudolf Hindemith
Cellist, conductor, composer, teacher

Written by Dr. Hans Gerd Brill

Born on January 9, 1900 in Niederrodenbach (near Frankfurt a. M., German Empire), died on October 7, 1974 in Munich (Federal Republic of Germany).

Rudolf Hindemith was granted 74 years on this earth, of which music dominated almost 70.

Introduced to the cello by his father as a child, he became a masterful player at an early age. As a Frankfurt children’s trio, he performed in public with his brother Paul and sister Antonie under his father’s supervision and “bravely stroked his bass” at the age of just six, as the press and audiences noted with great enthusiasm.

At the age of ten, he attended the renowned Dr. Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt and left as a “finished” cellist and conductor in March 1919. Rudolf Hindemith’s brilliant career as a cellist began immediately after his exams.

1920: First solo cellist with the Munich Concert Society; 1921: First solo cellist in the Vienna State Opera Orchestra. At the same time, he was a successful chamber musician with the so-called H-Trio with Anton Huber (violin) and Valentin Härtel (viola).

From 1924, he went on numerous, very successful concert tours as a permanent member for three years with the Amar Quartet founded by his brother Paul and the violinist Licco Amar.

As a restless spirit always on the lookout for new challenges, he was electrified by the jazz that came to Europe in the mid-1920s. Rudolf left the Amar Quartet, founded his own jazz band, wrote numerous arrangements of well-known jazz pieces for it and performed with it in 1926/27 as the first “radio jazz band” of the Frankfurt radio station. Hindemith did not play the cello, but the saxophone!

He had only been able to demonstrate his abilities as a conductor on a few occasions. This changed in 1930, when Berlin Radio engaged him to conduct its radio choir and radio orchestra. Here, his interpretations of a series of cycles from Verdi operas in particular met with an undividedly positive response from audiences and experts alike.

At the same time as his engagement in Berlin, from 1931 onwards he built up a further foothold as a conductor in Bavaria with his Munich Wind Orchestra and was thus well on the way to a brilliant career as an orchestra leader.

Through his intensive work with the wind ensemble, he shifted the focus of his work to Munich and ended his conducting career in Berlin. He now also began to emerge as a composer. He was able to perform his first works as part of a concert series that he had established in Munich. The pianist Hermann Bischler, with whom he had been friends for decades, was available to perform many of his works.

He was soon thinking of greater challenges as a composer. In 1938/39, he composed his first opera: Konradin der letzte Hohenstaufe. However, this was never performed in its entirety; instead, individual pieces from this work were presented in concert.

The fact that Rudolf Hindemith was increasingly perceived by the public as a conductor and composer during these years led to a dispute with his brother over the name “Hindemith”. The internationally renowned composer Paul Hindemith had previously leased the name for himself, as it seemed to the younger brother Rudolf. As a result, Rudolf used various pseudonyms until he finally settled on the name “Hans Lofer” at the beginning of the 1950s.

On December 14, 1939, he married the pianist and piano teacher Maria Landes (1901-1987), with whom he was acquainted through his musical work and who had already performed a number of his works.

Still under the name “Rudolf Hindemith”, he composed a series of “military marches” for air force orchestras at the beginning of the 1940s, which can be described as an absolutely idiosyncratic and unusual, high-caliber musical and artistic exploration of this theme.

From 1942 to 1944, he was extremely successful as conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra of the General Government in Krakow. He then returned to Munich, but did not continue his work as a conductor. Instead, in the post-war years, he devoted himself to his work as a composer and as a teacher of numerous pupils, whom he often taught together with his wife, who was now a professor at the Munich Academy of Music.

Numerous renowned musicians have emerged from this “teaching unit”. Today, there are two “grandchildren-students” who are held in high esteem internationally: in Germany, the award-winning musician, university teacher and jazz pianist Michael Wollny, whose long-time teacher Jutta Müller-Vornehm studied with Rudolf Hindemith and Maria Landes, and in Austria, the concert pianist and university teacher Stephanie Timoschek-Gumpinger, who studied with Prof. Annamaria Bodoky-Krause, also a student of Rudolf Hindemith and Maria Landes.

Rudolf Hindemith’s very varied oeuvre as a composer includes numerous works for piano, chamber music ensembles and orchestra as well as another opera: The Emperor’s New Clothes. This was published by Brucknerverlag (today: Bärenreiter Verlag) and premiered in Gelsenkirchen in 1951. It has remained a successful stage play to this day.

Rudolf Hindemith’s complete works have been published by Karthause-Schmülling (www.karthause-schmuelling.de) since 2000. A monograph on the composer will also be published there shortly.

Works by Rudolf Hindemith are currently available on recordings from the labels “ORF 1 Radio Österreich” (Stephanie Timoschek-Gumpinger Rudolf Hindemith: Das Klavierwerk – with Hindemith’s complete piano works on a double CD), “ACT” (Michael Wollny Mondenkind – with Hindemith’s Sonatine no. 7 by Hindemith) and “Dreyer-Gaido” (Rudolf Hindemith Edition Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3 – with numerous contemporary and historical recordings by renowned musicians and Hindemith himself).

While Rudolf Hindemith actually wanted to be called “Hans Lofer” on his gravestone, his creative work no longer requires a pseudonym. It lives on and perhaps fits the times more than ever!

Translation by Willoughby Ann Walshe

Published 25 years ago on the 100th birthday of Rudolf Hindemith – only in German language:

Hans Gerd Brill, Rudolf Hindemith – Zwei Leben. Kurzbiographie und Werkverzeichnis [Rudolf Hindemith – Two Lives. Short biography and list of works]. Karthause-Schmülling Verlag, Kamen, 2000. – ISBN 978-3-922100-10-2 · 24 Seiten · Broschur · 17 x 24 cm · 8,50 Euro.