After lying dormant for centuries, Monteverdi's 1607 opera Orfeo kindled the interest of numerous 20th century composers, including d'Indy, Orff, and Respighi, who made modern performing editions of the score. Atypically for an early Baroque opera composer, Monteverdi left a detailed list of instruments used in the first production, but the score, with a few exceptions, includes only the vocal lines and the bass line, leaving it to the performers to fill in the instrumentation. Until Paul Hindemith's revolutionary 1943 ...
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After lying dormant for centuries, Monteverdi's 1607 opera Orfeo kindled the interest of numerous 20th century composers, including d'Indy, Orff, and Respighi, who made modern performing editions of the score. Atypically for an early Baroque opera composer, Monteverdi left a detailed list of instruments used in the first production, but the score, with a few exceptions, includes only the vocal lines and the bass line, leaving it to the performers to fill in the instrumentation. Until Paul Hindemith's revolutionary 1943 realization of the score using period-appropriate instruments, the modern versions had used modern instruments. Hindemith's version, which he called a "work in progress," had its premiere at Yale in 1944, and this live recording comes from its European premiere in Vienna a decade later. Among the young performers who went on to major careers were bass Waldemar Kmentt, harpsichordist and organist Anton Heiller, and most significantly, Nikolaus Harnoncourt playing gamba, who described the...
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