Symphonie „Mathis der Maler“

Hindemith was at first sceptical about turning the life of the 16th-century-painter Matthias Gruenewald into an opera, but he skilfully interwove the artist’s biography with the social and religious battles of the time of the Peasants’ War into his libretto. Mathis’ struggle for artistic autonomy has often been interpreted as an expression of Hindemith’s own situation in National Socialist Germany. While he worked on the opera he was commissioned by Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic Opera to write an orchestral work. Three of the orchestral interludes form this Symphony – one of his most stunning compositions.