The young artists of Mannes School of Music will perform works by one of the most important composers of the 20th century Paul Hindemith, and some of his prominent American students: Samuel Adler, Willson Osborne and Lukas Foss.

This event is free but you have to register here.

Paul Hindemith ( 1895-1963) was a great German composer, teacher, music theorists, violist and conductor.

Leonard Bernstein said about him:

“Paul Hindemith was a true master in the great German tradition, a master of melody, of harmony and counterpoint, and rhythm and form, and orchestration and everything that has to do with music, and he wrote beautiful music. He was a worthy successor to the long line of great German composers that included Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner; and in the minds of many people he was the last of that traditional line.”

Hindemith left the Nazi Germany in 1937 to Switzerland. In 1940 he arrived in the USA and was appointed a professor of music at Yale University. A great teacher and mentor, Hindemith taught and deeply influenced the lives of hundreds of musicians in Europe and America.

American composer, conductor, author and teacher, Samuel Adler was born in 1928 in Germany to a Jewish family, which fled to the USA in 1939. He studied at Boston University and at Harvard. Paul Hindemith was one of his most important teachers. He also worked with Aaron Copland, Walter Piston and Serge Koussevitzky. After reaching prominence as a composer, Adler became a professor of composition at Eastman School of Music, and later on, at the Juilliard School.He has been awarded many prizes, including a membership into the American Academy in Berlin. In May, 2018, Consul General of Germany in New York, David Gill presented to Samuel Adler the German Order of Merit-Officer’s Cross : Bundesverdienskreuz 1.Klasse.

Willson Osborne ( 1906-1979) was an American composer, who studied at the University of Michigan and at Yale, as a student of Paul Hindemith. Osborne’s compositional style is neoclassical. His Rhapsody for solo bassoon, which will be performed tonight, became one his best known works.

Lukas Foss (1922-2009) was a German-American composer, pianist and conductor. His family moved to Paris in 1933 and subsequently to the USA in 1937. Foss received his education at Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied piano with Isabelle Vengerova, composition with Rosario Scalero, and conducting with Fritz Reiner. Leonard Bernstein, a classmate of Lukas Foss, described him as “ an authentic genius ”. From 1939 till 1940 Foss studied composition at Yale with Hindemith. The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Lukas Foss in the year of 2000 with a Gold Medal for his extraordinary accomplishments in the field of music.