Wolfgang Koch/Kurt Streit/Manuela Uhl/Vienna SO/Bertrand de Billy
(Naxos, Blu-ray or 2 DVDs)
The visionary story of an artist caught up in social turmoil still resonates in this superbly conducted production
Mathis der Maler is easily the best known of Paul Hindemith’s nine operas, but its music is more often encountered in the concert hall than the opera house, thanks to the symphony that the composer extracted from his score. Since it was first seen, in Zurich in 1937, subsequent stagings have been few and far between – the Hamburg Opera brought it to the Edinburgh festival in 1952, but Mathis der Maler did not reach the London stage until the Royal Opera’s production in 1995. This recording (which is also being released next month by Capriccio in an audio-only version) is taken from a production by Keith Warner at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna in 2012.