Hanns Eisler - Klingende Dokumente IV (1982)

Hanns Eisler´s reflections "On the task of music in our time" ("Über die Aufgabe der Musik in unserer Zeit") suggest that music, by exerting a cathartic effect on human feelings, should help produce people who are "better equipped" for socialism. Such views strike us as antiquated today. But the words he then added appear to have gained a new relevance in the complex world situation we are facing at the beginning of the 21th century in the light of the near-total collapse of the socialist world and the worldwide triumph of capitalism, but also in view of an incresingly widespread sense of apocalyptic resignation: "There exists a facile cynicism, a facile objectivism, a facile tendency to look at our weakneses and denying our merits and virtues which fills me with gloom and anger."

The "White Bread Cantata " ("Weißbrot-Kantate", after an Italian peasant legend) belongs to a group of small cantatas for vocalists and several instruments composed in 1934.

The "Peace Song" ("Friedenslied") figures among a group of children´s songs which were written around 1950 while Eisler was composing the "New German Folk Songs " based on texts by Johannes R. Becher.

The "Lenin Requiem" (words by Brecht) was finished in exile as early as 5 August 1937, but it was not until 22 November 1958 that it received its first perfomance in Berlin. The cantata "The Carpet-Weavers of Kuyan-Bulak" ("Die Teppichweber von Kujan Bulak", Brecht) was composed in 1957 and had its premiere on 17 February 1958.

Tracklist:

(01) Vom Sprengen des Gartens
(02) Haltung zum Lehrer Schönberg - Treue des Schülers zum Lehrer (Bunge-Gespräch, 1958)
(03) Lenin - Requiem für Alt- und Baritonsolo, Chor und Orchester
(04) Eisler - ein politischer Komponist?
(Herrmann-Gespräch, 1961)
(05) Aus ,,Die Weissbrotkantate"
Nr.3 Abschließende Bemerkung
(06) Die Weißbrotkantate
(07) Friedenslied
(08) Die Tage der Kommune
Aus der Bühnenmusik Nr.1-3
(09) Brecht, Eisler und Chaplin
(Bunge-Gespräch, 1958)
(10) Galileo Galilei
Ballade Nr.9 aus der Bühnenmusik
(11) Lebensfreude - ohne Konformismus zur Vergangenheit hin (Bunge-Gespräch, 1958)
(12) Der Held der westlichen Welt
Vier Lieder aus der Bühnenmusik
(13) Über die Aufgabe der Musik unserer Zeit
(Herrmann-Gespräch, 1960)
(14) Die Teppichweber von Kujan-Bulak
Kantate für Sopran und Orchester

Hanns Eisler - Klingende Dokumente IV (1982)
(320 kbps, no cover art)