Hanns Eisler: Works for Orchestra, Vol. 1

On this CD:

1. Suite for orchestra No. 1, Op. 23
Composed by Hanns Eisler
Performed by Leipzig Chamber Music Association of the Gewandhaus Orchestras
Conducted by Max Pommer

2. Suite for orchestra No. 2, "Niemandsland," Op. 24
Composed by Hanns Eisler

Conducted by Heinz Rogner

3. Suite no. 3, op. 26 "Kuhle Wampe"
Composed by Hanns Eisler

Conducted by Heinz Rogner

4. Suite no. 4, op. 30 "Die Jugend hat das Wort"
Composed by Hanns Eisler

Conducted by Heinz Rogner

5. Theme & Variations, "The Long March"
Composed by Hanns Eisler
Performed by Leipzig Chamber Music Association of the Gewandhaus Orchestras with Volker Brautigam, Gerhard Erber
Conducted by Max Pommer

6. Chamber Symphony, Op 69
Composed by Hanns Eisler
Performed by Leipzig Chamber Music Association of the Gewandhaus Orchestras with Volker Brautigam, Gerhard Erber
Conducted by Max Pommer

Hanns Eisler: Works for Orchestra, Vol. 1, Music, Hanns Eisler, Heinz Rogner, Max Pommer, Berliner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester, Leipziger Kammermusikvereinigung des Gewandhausorchesters, Volker Brautigam, Gerhard Erber, Chamber Symphony, Classical, Miscellaneous, Miscellaneous Music, Orchestral

Hanns Eisler: Works for Orchestra, Vol. 1
Average customer rating:

Music for the masses--and a surprising twist

Hanns Eisler: Works for Orchestra, Vol. 1

Manufacturer: Berlin Classics
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Eisler, Hanns | ( E ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music
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Hanns Eisler: Chamber Music

ASIN: B0000035V6
Release Date: 1996-06-18

Customer Reviews:

Music for the masses--and a surprising twist.......2002-09-15

Recorded in 1970s East Germany by the famed Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, this sampling of Hanns Eisler's short chamber works (four suites based on the scores for early sound films and a highly-compressed "Chamber Symphony" composed in the 1940s) showcases Eisler's lifelong quest for "communicative" music oriented towards social reality.

The four suites are all strictly tonal, and echo Eisler's work of the same period with Bertolt Brecht's radical political theater. They include music for the leftist antiwar movie "No Man's Land"--a film that so enraged the Nazis they tracked down and destroyed every copy.

But the Chamber Symphony is a surprising return to the "modern" twelve-tone style of his teacher, Arnold Schoenberg. Composed in the early 1940s (during Eisler's exile in the U.S.) as film music for a documentary on the Arctic ice sheet, it was an experiment in applying the twelve-tone method to film in a way that would engage an ordinary audience. The innovative use of electronic instruments with a small chamber ensemble effectively communicates both the intense cold portrayed in the documentary and the glacially slow but powerful movement of the Arctic ice mass. But the music, while pictorial, also has a connection with the movement of historical forces--as one would expect from a politically-engaged composer like Eisler. According to Eisler scholar Günter Mayer (in his notes for the Berlin Classics CD of this music), "whilst working on the final version ... he had followed reports on the radio about the invasion of France and Paris by the fascist troops (summer 1940). In consequence, the sharp contrasts between assaultingly shrill and lyrically tender sounds stand for his experience of the brutality of fascism and the barbaric destruction of human relationships."

While the music is definitely "modern" in contrast to his strictly tonal political compositions in Berlin before Hitler's seizure of power, Eisler's rejection of abstract or strictly concert music is evident in this composition. Like other anti-romantic composers of the era he works with abbreviated and rapidly shifting forms--a "montage effect" characteristic of Weimar art and one suitable for the fast-paced tempo of an experimental film. Like his other "applied" chamber works of the same period, the Chamber Symphony reinforces Eisler's reputation as one of the most expressive and reachable composers in the twelve-tone idiom.

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