Rebner Quartet 1915-1921
In the winter of 1915 Hindemith became a member of the quartet of his teacher, Adolf Rebner. He first played second violin and then changed - at his own request - to the viola. The cellist was Maurits Frank, who had taught Hindemith's brother Rudolf at Hoch's Conservatory. The Quartet usually performed its concerts in Frankfurt and neighbouring towns, acquiring a certain prestige in the region.
In the «Kölnische Zeitung» of December 1919 one could read: «At the Musical Society, the gentlemen of the Frankfurt Rebner Quartet (A. Rebner, H. Kraus, P. Hindemith, M. Frank) were welcome guests [...]. The splendid musical and sonorous merits of the Rebner Quartet were particularly apparent in a late Haydn Quartet, Op. 76 in B-flat major and in Beethoven's F-minor Quartet, Op. 95 [...].» Two extensive tours took the Quartet to Holland and Spain in 1921.
There were only rarely contemporary compositions on the programmes of the Rebner Quartet, these few including string quartets by Bartok, Schönberg's String Quartet, Op. 7 and Hindemith's 1st String Quartet, Op. 10. They preferred to play Haydn and especially Beethoven, to whom Rebner was particularly devoted. Hindemith, the young musician in pursuit of new frontiers, soon tired of such conventional programmes: «This music would have to be prohibited for five years!» he energetically demanded, «Beethoven is too subjective for me.» Disagreements over programming finally led to a row with Rebner during the Spanish tour in autumn 1921, and Hindemith left the Quartet.