Hindemith’s own practical music-making accompanied his path as a composer from his beginnings as a student at the Frankfurt Hoch Conservatory to his last work, the Mass for mixed a cappella choir (1963), completed a few weeks before his death and premiered by him.  His career as a practical musician is thus remarkable in its artistic quality and probably unique in its variety.

This musician, originally trained as an orchestral violinist, was able to take over the position of concertmaster at the Frankfurt Opera at barely the age of twenty, a position which he held until 1923. During the 1920s he became one of the most successful violists of his time – not least due to the personal unity of composer and instrumentalist which he embodied. From 1919 to 1939 he composed seven viola sonatas altogether (the solo Sonatas Op. 11 No.5, Op. 25 No. 1, Op. 31 No. 4 and the Sonata of 1937 as well as the Sonatas with piano accompaniment Op. 11 No. 4, Op. 25 No. 4 and the Sonata of 1939).

The Amar Quartet, in which Hindemith played the violia, began its regular concertising activities in the summer of 1922. They became a regular institution especially at Donaueschingen Music Festivals, where they performed the premieres of a number of works. In addition, the Quartet gave up to 100 concerts a year in many European countries and also toured the Soviet Union during the winters of 1927/28 and 1928/29. His membership in the Amar Quartet inspired Hindemith to compose two string quartets, one string trio and three solo sonatas for the other quartet members. The Amar Quartet soon belonged to the outstanding ensembles of its time and was unanimously acclaimed for its technical mastery: “The objectified, masterly tone of the first violinist Licco Amar is characteristic for the spirit which carries the performances of this ensemble, whose basic attitude is a full-blooded joy of music-making based upon the extremely differentiated art of ensemble-playing.” Characteristic of the Amar Quartet – probably thanks directly to Hindemith – is the principle of emphatic “music-making,” giving oneself over unconditionally to making music for the sake of the music. This expressed itself, not least, in an immense quartet repertoire of over 200 works ranging from the classics to the modern period. It made possible a great variety in programming which hardly ever led to a repeat of a sequence of works.

Hindemith’s occupation with the performance of “early music” already began in 1922. For the viola d’amore (“a simply marvellous instrument […], the most beautiful sound you can imagine, a sweetness and softness that cannot be described,” as Hindemith wrote in a letter to a lady friend) he composed the Kleine Sonate Op. 25 No. 2 (1922) and the Kammermusik No. 6 for viola d’amore and large chamber orchestra, Op. 46 No. 1 (1927/30), which he took into his concert repertoire. He gave numerous concerts of baroque music together with a harpsichordist and the cellist of the Amar Quartet. He later prepared programmes with the Collegium Musicum at Yale University with compositions from Perotin to Bach, in which he participated by playing violin, viola, vielle, viola da gamba or bassoon as required.

Hindemith left the Amar Quartet in the spring of 1929; the ensemble continued to exist with another violist until 1933. He founded a String Trio in 1929 together with the violinist Joseph Wolfsthal and the cellist Emanuel Feuermann with which he gave concerts throughout Europe until 1934 (in 1931 Simon Goldberg took over the position of the prematurely deceased Wolfsthal). He performed more often as a concert soloist; his repertoire included works from Mozart to William Walton, whose Viola Concerto he premiered in 1929 as well as the Concerto by Darius Milhaud (1930) dedicated to him. He composed a total of three viola concertos for his own concert performances: the Kammermusik Nr. 5 für Solobratsche und größeres Kammerorchester, Op. 36 No. 4 (premiere in 1927 with the orchestra of the Berlin State Opera under Otto Klemperer); the 1930 Konzertmusik für Solobratsche und größeres Kammerorchesterm, Op. 48 (premiere 1930 with the Berlin Philharmonic under Wilhelm Furtwängler) as well as Der Schwanendreher. Konzert nach alten Volksliedern für Bratsche und kleines Orchester (premiere in 1935 with the Concertgebouw Orkest in Amsterdam under Willem Mengelberg).

Hindemith decided to end his career as a violist when he heard his latest recordings in 1940: “I have decided to finally give up playing in public. If it is no more beautiful than what came out of the gramophone, it is no longer worth showing.” Since the end of the Second World War he had increasingly made a name for himself as a conductor. The renown that he gained through this can be measured by the quality of the ensembles and the status of the occasions for which he was engaged. He was a guest conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra many time, with which he also produced several recordings and toured to the Edinburgh Fesival in 1955. He was invited to Bayreuth in 1953 in order to perform Beethoven’s 9th  Symphony there, he conducted the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the festival concert to celebrate the 200th birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on 27 January 1956 and conducted the opening concert of the Beethovenhalle in Bonn. He was a guest conductor with the  Bamberg Symphony and the Radio Symphony Orchestras in Bremen, Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne and Baden-Baden. The orchestras he conducted at concerts in the USA included the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic; he went on tour with the Vienna Philharmonic to Japan in the spring of 1956. He was a frequent guest of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, performed with Paul Sacher’s Basle Chamber Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zürich and with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande; he was invited by the  Orchestre National de Paris, London Symphony Orchestra and the Hallé Orchestra. During the 17 years of his conducting activity, he stood on the podium well over 600 times and had acquired a repertoire of about 300 works.