Photo above of the Amar Quartet on tour in Amsterdam 1924, meeting with Stravinsky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eviu5qU_NME Link to a recording of the Amar Quartet playing Hindemith String Quartet opus 22 (1926)
As seen with Ravel and the Galimir Quartet, the Amar Quartet's recording of Hindemith helps the listener to get a unique insight into Hindemith's mind as a composer ( he was himself violist of the group.)
Far from the dry, worthy image Hindemith's music sometimes suffers from, this recording has a lyrical, inventive and creative quality which demonstrates how far the gap can be between a composer's imagination and the written text.
The Amar Quartet was founded in 1921 at the Donaueschingen Chamber Music Festival. The Havemann Quartet was due to give the premiere of Hindemith's 3rd String Quartet opus 16 but they found it unplayable. A group had to be quickly put together to rehearse and perform the piece in 8 days, and the premiere was in the end a big success. The performers were Lico Amar first violin, Walter Caspar second violin, Hindemith himself as violist and his brother Rudolf Hindemith as cellist. This group of players became the Amar Quartet which became an important part of music life in the 20's, playing over 500 concerts. The group was untiringly committed to including contemporary music on their programmes. As well as Hindemith's own works they performed works by Bartok, Krenek, Ravel, Webern, Casella, Stravinsky, Hába and Schönberg. They intentionally concentrated on rarely played works from the classical and romantic era so Beethoven and Haydn were not often included on their programmes. They undertook two big tours of the Soviet Union in 1927 and 1928, and Hindemith met with Shostakovitch and was able to hear some Russian contemporary music. Shostakovitch talks about this encounter ( not altogether brimming with praise for Hindemith's music!) in Testimony the book by Solomon Volkov.
Eventually fights broke out between Hindemith and his brother Rudof, so the cellist Maurits Franks became his replacement ( reading about Rudolf's life in and around the second world war in comparison to Paul's is quite a cautionary tale) The Quartet remained the same until Hindemith's departure in 1929 and the quartet finally disbanded in 1933