Hindemith made a setting for voice and piano of the 15 poems of
Rainer Maria Rilke's "Das Marienleben (The Life of Mary)" in 1923, and in spite of its initial success, worked on revising the songs over the next 25 years, publishing a new version in 1948. In 1923,
Hindemith had been a young iconoclast, unencumbered by any ideology except for the necessity of throwing off the shackles of Romanticism, and his works of that period have a saucy exuberance. By 1948, he had codified his compositional technique, embracing an orthodoxy of his own devising, as systematically as Schoenberg had a generation earlier. The harmonic and melodic system, which was tonal but avoided triads, worked against ease of comprehensibility and direct emotional connection, giving much of his later work a distancing sense of abstraction. The new version of Das Marienleben includes some songs that had been completely rewritten, and numerous other significant revisions, resulting in a more stylistically unified work, but one with less quirky individuality and variety. The revised version contains many lovely moments, but as a 70-minute composition, it's easier to admire than love. Danish soprano
Elisabeth Meyer-Topsøe sings with commitment and understanding, but the songs seem to cause some strain at both the top and bottom of her range. She also doesn't seem to be entirely in control of her vibrato, which can become quite wide. This is especially troublesome in
Hindemith's non-triadic harmonic environment, which benefits from absolute precision and clarity of pitch.
Per Salo provides an exceptionally expressive and lively accompaniment, but he has the advantage of a piano part that's far more interesting and appealing than the angular vocal line. The recording sounds a little close, especially for
Meyer-Topsøe, and it tends to make her sound shrill.