Just in: Hindemith gets a seat in the Chicago Symphony
mainPress release:
During the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s 2012-13 season, anonymous donors endowed in perpetuity the principal viola chair but requested some time to decide on how they wanted the chair to be named. After quite a bit of thought, the donors have decided upon “The Paul Hindemith Principal Viola Chair, endowed by an anonymous benefactor.”
Hindemith appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on several occasions, as viola soloist and conductor, between 1938 and 1963.
What is that amazing instrument on the photo? A viola d’amore? I know that Hindemith was very much into old music, and that Austrian radio recorded a performance of Hindemith conducting Monteverdi’s Orfeo when such excursions into “ancient” music were extremely rare.