Hanns Eisler - Ernste Gesänge (1939-61)

Описание: Hanns Eisler (6 July 1898 – 6 September 1962) was an Austrian composer (his father was Austrian, and Eisler fought in a Hungarian regiment in World War I). He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artistic association with Bertolt Brecht, and for the scores he wrote for films. The Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" is named after him.

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Ernste Gesänge (1939-61)
Dedication: Meiner Frau Steffi gewidmet

Vorspiel und Spruch (0:00)
1. Asyl (1:22)
2. Traurigkeit (4:20)
3. Verzweiflung (6:19)
4. An die Hoffnung (7:08)
5. Parteitag (8:24)
6. Komm ins Offene, Freund! (9:17)
7. Epilog (blocked worldwide due to copyright)

Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) Vorspiel, #1, #4 and #6
Berthold Viertel (1885-1953) #2
Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), translated by Robert Hamerling (1830-1889) #3
after Helmut Richter #5

Matthias Goerne, Bariton and Sinfonieorchester – Frankfurt Radio Symphony conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada.

See full performance here:    • Eisler: Ernste Gesänge ∙ hr-Sinfonieorches...  

Links to Frankfurt Radio Symphony:
https://www.hr-sinfonieorchester.de/i...
  / hrsinfonieorchester  

Begun in early 1961 and completed in August 1962, the cycle for baritone solo and string orchestra Ernste Gesaenge (Serious Songs) was Eilser’s last, as he died less than a month after its completion. Talking to Hans Bunge on August 14, 1962, Eisler reported: “Arranging the songs took me the most trouble. It took me a year to put seven little pieces into shape.” Asked for the meaning of this shape, he said: “It is consciousness—reflection—depression—revivaland again consciousness...It just must be done that way, otherwise it is not good. One cannot always write optimistic songs...one must describe the up and down of the actual situations, sing about it and comment on it.” For this purpose Eisler used Hoelderlin fragments which he had already set (“Asyl” (refuge) 1939; “An die Hoffnung” (to hope) 1943), and a text by Bertolt Viertel, written in 1936 to mark the years of Hitler’s dictatorship and already set to music as “Chanson allemande” in 1953. Now included in the cycle, “Traurigkeit” (sadness) received a new meaning. Eisler noted: “now each may seek out the anniversaries that make him sad.” The third song “Verzweiflung” (despair), to an old text by the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi, set for singing voice and piano by Eisler in 1953 as “Faustus Verzweiflung” (Faust’s despair), also received a new status in the cycle: “I need the deep starting-point to jump high”—or to raise hopes. The title of the fifth song, “XX.Parteitag”, was chosen by Eisler himself. Taking a few lines from a poem by Helmut Richter, he had headed them: “I believe it to be the honesty of the artist to name these things that have been so hard to live through.” Sadness and the hope of future happiness permeate the whole work. Autumn is a multiple metaphor: we look back at the past and forward to the future both in the entirely personal sphere and in the overall context of life in society.

One day after completing the work he told Hans Bunge about his “modest music”:
“I love these contradictions. And there is certainly contradiction in my latest work—between the “Serious Songs” and the present situation. But I believe we must think over the past. Anyone who wants the future must surmount the past. He must purify himself of the past and look clearly and cleanly into the future. I believe we do far too little about that. Perhaps it is the task of an artist—and his task is a very modest one, when we look at the modern world—to see the past truly and sharply and lead it (something for which art is particularly suited) into a future. An artist who does not do this is hopelessly at the mercy of a shabby optimism.”

—Guenter Mayer, translated by Janet and Michael Berridge