Hanns Eisler - Lieder - Irmgard Arnold (Sopran) - Zeitgenossen Ost

The series "zeitgenossen ost" presents 20th-century music whose rank will be retained well into the 21th century. It centres around characteristic works of outstanding compsers and exemplary performances by prominent artist from the former German Democratic Republic.

At the Second All-German Musical Festival in Coburg in the late summer of 1956 Irmgard Arnold gave her first Eisler concert. This amrked the beginning of Eisler´s collaboration with the singer. In numerous rehearsals with the composer she aquired a large repertory of his songs, ballads and solo cantatas written at different times of his life.
In the years that followed she gave numerous eisler song recitals accompanied by Andre Asriel on the piano. Undoubtedly, their concerts were of great importance for making this group of works popular.

The increasing split of Germny into East and West together with the fact that Irmgard Arnold due to her intense work at the Komische Oper could only perform these Eisler recitals very rarely prevented her interpretations from becoming popular in the West. Here it was the actress and chansonette Gisela May, with whom Eisler had also collaborated in the 1950s, who along with Ernst Busch came to be regarded as the congenial interpreter of Eisler´s vocal works in her concert appearance in Western Europe and the United States.
Thus these over 40-year-old recordings of two Arnold-Asriel concerts - November, 21 1956 and October, 14 1957 at the Berliner Staatsoper Unter den Linden -  are reaching us as something of a legacy, an authorized interpretation which, more than many others, met the composer´s original intentions.

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Hanns Eisler - Lieder - Irmgard Arnold (Sopran)
(192 kbps, small front cover included)