String Trio No. 2 (Hindemith)

String Trio No. 2 (German: 2. Trio für Geige, Bratsche und Violoncello) is the last string trio by German composer Paul Hindemith. It was composed in 1933 and recorded by the composer shortly after.

The Trio was composed in early 1933 and premiered on March 17, 1933, in Antwerp with Szymon Goldberg at the violin, Hindemith himself at the viola, and Emanuel Feuermann at the cello. The score was first published on 21 December, 1933, followed by the performance parts on 1 February, 1934, under B. Schott's Söhne. The extant autograph materials kept at the Hindemith Institute in Frankfurt include a 41-page full score completed between February and March 1933, a 17-page handwritten viola part from the same period, and substantial sketches spread across several notebooks from 1932 to 1933.^[1]

Hindemith's String Trio No. 2 is a twenty-four minute work cast into three untitled movements:

It is scored for violin, viola, and cello. As in Hindemith’s earlier trio, the second trio presents dense and tightly woven contrapuntal textures framed by modernist harmonic and melodic features, also present in many other Hindemith works. This would later become more refined in later compositions, including Mathis der Maler.^[2]

The following is a list of recordings of Hindemith's String Trio No. 2

• String Trio No. 2 (Hindemith): Scores at the International Music Score Library Project