Hindemith: Music for Viola and Orchestra Hyperion CDA 67774 * * * * *

This disc, which includes three concertos and the Funeral Musicfor George V, completes Lawrence Power's excellent Hyperion survey of Paul Hindemith's music for viola, the instrument on which the composer was an internationally celebrated virtuoso. The smilingly busy brio which opens the Op48 Konzertmusikof 1930 shows the sheer vitality which infused the best of that era's re-appropriation of baroque practices. There's a sharper bite to the fast movements of the earlier KammermusikNo 5 of 1927. The slow movements of both works show a softer side, and the folksong-based Der Schwanendreher(named after The Swan-Turner, one of the songs it features), is thoroughly genial. The collection's most famous piece, the affecting Funeral Music, was famously written in just six hours for a BBC broadcast, the day after the king died. See url.ie/4qdb MICHAEL DERVAN