Paul Hindemith is back
On October 27, the Paul Hindemith Archive was opened with a festive event in the auditorium of the University of Zurich. Tabea Zimmermann played his Sonata op. 25/1 for viola solo and Christine Lubkoll gave the keynote speech.
Actually, the Archive should have been opened last year in April. The Fondation Hindemith had donated the archives of the composer and his wife from their villa in Blonay to the Institute of Musicology at the University of Zurich (see SMZ 6/2020, p. 24). The ceremony had to be postponed several times due to the pandemic. There was great joy in the auditorium of the University of Zurich when it finally took place on October 27. "Hindemith is back," said Katharina Michaelowa, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Zurich. Cultivating the memory of Paul Hindemith makes his creativity clearly tangible and motivates people to try new things. Andreas Eckhardt, President of the Fondation Hindemith, Blonay, pointed out that the aim of this donation was to preserve Hindemith's library as a whole in the spirit of "appropriate remembrance" and to make it available to academics and the public.
Integrated into the celebration was the so-called "Hindemith Lecture 2021". Since 2006, the Institute of Musicology has commemorated the first chair holder with a lecture every November. Christine Lubkoll, Professor at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, spoke on the subject of "Obligatory Legacy": Paul Hindemith and the cultural tradition. With reference to the speech Hindemith had given in Hamburg on September 12, 1950 (Johann Sebastian Bach. Ein verpflichtendes Erbe), she shed light on Hindemith's life as an exile and returnee, his relationship to tradition and concluded: "Obligatory heritage is always a departure."
In her welcoming remarks, Inga Mai Groote, Director of the Institute of Musicology at the University of Zurich, who hosted the event, pointed this out: The Zurich Hindemith Archive wants to preserve the treasures, but also make them resound. And so Tabea Zimmermann rounded off this opening ceremony in the most beautiful way with her highly impressive interpretation of Hindemith's Sonata for viola solo op. 25/1.
