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That's a pretty good assessment. Counterpoint is a reason I like Hindemith. A regular on a classical forum I visit is a big Hindemith enthusiast and raves about his opera Cardillac. I recall not digging the Mathis der Maler (his famous opera) excerpts I heard, so never pursued Cardillac.

An underrated album, I think. The sound and production ares flawless, thanks to Gary McFarland's impeccable taste and knowledge, the sidemen are first choice. Tjader plays even the blandest pop tunes with his great melodic taste and feeling. Can be used for easy listening but serious attention reveals many tasteful details. https://www.discogs.com/release/3063573-Cal-Tjader-Solar-Heat

I don't really enjoy the live albums that much, but do like the studio material a lot. But I'll wait a long time to see if there's a nicely-priced copy of this small set in the future.

It’s funny… I always genuinely love listening to Hindemith — yet I can’t cite very many specific works of his that I specifically love. I’ve got a ton of his stuff too, nearly all on CPO (20 years ago I found all three of those unified orchestral CPO mini-box-sets for 50% off list price, brand new and sealed). Just counted, I’ve got a total 26 discs of Hindemith — and the only composers I have more of, are Ives and Henze… and then also Grieg (my wife’s favorite composer). But, strangely, I don’t have more  than a handful of specific works by Hindemith that are ‘favorites’.  More so, I have specific CD’s of his that overall have a several works that happen to have the same timbres — and degrees of contrapuntal-ism — that I always remember really suit my fancy. Perhaps his ‘dry’ reputation plays into this. If I was giving numeric scores, it’s like ALL of it is a 7/10 minimum — but practically none of it is over 8/10 either. It’s all consistently VERY good, but little of it is quite ‘great’ (but oh so very close).  

Hey, it's a lot better than that! Very inventive music, actually. And she was able to tame Jaco, which was no small feat  All told, it's my favorite period of hers. I just don't have a need to go back to it in a big ass set like this one.