I'm glad to have heard this premiere recording of Hindemith's penultimate opera, conducted impressively by Marek Janowski. In the title role, Francois Le Roux gives a cultivated, humane performance.

Die Harmonie der Welt is one of Hindemith's major works, perhaps his major post-war work.
He first seems to have contemplated an opera on the polymath Johannes Kepler in the late 1930s, in the wake of Mathis der Maler. But it wasn't until 1955 that serious work was started on the libretto, although, as with Mathis two decades before, he had already written a symphony using themes reserved for the opera.
There are also superficial similarities in subject treatment between the two stage works. Die Harmonie is an opera about an astronomer-cum-philosopher rather than science, just as Mathis had been about an artist, not painting. Kepler's career is set in the context of his time, culminating in the tumultuous Thirty Years' War, just as Grünewald's had been set against the 16th-century Peasants' Revolt. Yet Kepler isn't as involved in the whirl of events as Mathis; he stands apart from them, concerned increasingly just to resolve his theories about the harmony of the world. In the end his search is vain and he dies with the word 'Futile' on his lips.
By the time of the premiere, Hindemith's star had waned and some critics regarded the opera also as futile, especially when compared to Cardillac and Mathis. But in several respects it's just as successful musically, its symphonic coherence and integration more consistently achieved than in earlier stage works and the composer had grown as an artist. If some of the characterisation is twodimensional, this is made to serve the symbolic aspects of the whole, most clearly in the final scene as the main characters assume celestial roles in a cosmic passacaglia, the incandescent culmination of which truly raises the roof.
Marek Janowski directs a splendidly paced and committed performance, with some fine singing and playing from the forces of Berlin Radio.
François Le Roux turns in a thoughtful and multi-faceted account of Kepler, with Robert Wörle's conniving but ultimately doomed Wallenstein and Christian Elsner's Ulrich the pick of the rest. Recorded in the Jesus-Christus- Kirche, Berlin, the sound is clear and spacious, the acoustic and balance serving the music better than in most theatres. A marvellous achievement, strongly recommended.

Of the many excellent discs I've reviewed this year, one stands out: the first recording in any medium of Hindemith's penultimate opera, Die Harmonie der Welt