The Most Beautiful Sounds Next to Silence

In a programme that combines Alfred Schnittke’s Concert for piano and string orchestra with Paul Hindemith’s Symphony Mathis der Maler and the composer’s The Four Temperaments, pianist Anna Gourari together with the Lugano-based Orchestra della Svizzera italiana under Markus Poschner shines in powerful performances that dress these idiosyncratic and contrasting works in beaming colours. The recording, captured at the Auditorio Stelio Molo – abound with sonic detail –, undergirds both the counterpuntal fabric of Hindemith’s neoclassical leaning repertory, and the polystilistic maze of Schnittke’s Concerto, where, according to the composer himself “everything – unable to create the balance between ‘sunshine’ and ‘storm clouds’ – shatters finally into a thousand pieces”.

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