It was in the second half of Hindemith’s career—after the composition of the opera Mathis der Maler (1933–5) and the campaign against it by the Nazis which eventually forced his emigration from Germany—that Hindemith produced his major utterances for solo piano. In his three piano sonatas, all written in 1936, Hindemith presents himself not as the rebel and revolutionary of the 1920s, but rather as an heir to the contrapuntal skill and keyboard dexterity of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Markus Becker has been acclaimed for his persuasive and authoritative recordings of German repertoire of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.