Anti-nazi Ostersonntag - Hanns Eisler sets Brecht

Ostersonntag Hanns Eisler's setting of Bertolt Brecht's poem Frühling 1938, from Eisler's Hollywood Liederbuch.  Brecht opposed capitalist oppression  but his heirs enforce copyright to extreme lengths.  Fortunately, Eisler believed in the dissemination of Brecht's ideas, and in solidarity with the People. Eisler's song begins almost hesitantly, as if the feelings expressed are too painful to confront. The piano plays dotted rhythms,  pulsating tension and suppressed  anxiety.

"Today", the singer intones, "it's Easter Sunday." But a chill wind blows a sudden snowstorm, across the sea, covering the green shoots of Spring under a blanket of snow. An apricot tree stands in the garden, protected by the warm walls of the house. Will its buds be killed by frost?  The poet's son begs him to protect the tree . The words "younger son" are warmly shaped, in contrast to the frigid tension that's gone before.  The pace becomes more urgent.  The father had been writing a diatribe against the warmongers whose machinations threaten the whole continent, the island of calm, the people there and "my family", words again set with gentle warmth.  Eisler elides the last phrase,  with a dramatic descending curve, ending with the words "vertilgen muss"  half-spoken, half-sung, but sinister.  The edgy chords become stronger and more defiant.  Minor key, but major impact. Silently, father and son place hessian over the freezing buds.  Will the tree survive, will it bear fruit? The song ends inconclusively, the last figures on the piano repeating, hovering, unresolved.  The song lasts barely 90 seconds, yet encompasses vast stretches of time, place and feeling.  Like Brecht, Eisler was in exile, physically comfortable but vulnerable.  Poet and composer both in emotional "islands", trying to stave off the chill of what they knew was happening back home.

Eisler's Hollywood Liederbuch is an amazingly varied document of alienation and protest, the "Winterreise of the Twentieth Century", as Matthias Goerne, its finest interpreter, has called it.   Read more about Goerne and Eisler's Hollywood Liederbuch HERE, and about Eisler's Deutsche Sinfonie HERE. Lots  more on this site about Eisler, Brecht, Goerne, war and anti-facism.

The photo below is ironic, too.  In the early 20th century cars were a symbol of progress and faith in a future where machines would serve man. Thus cars were often depicted on greeting cards, especially at New Year. Although commercial cards were common, people often arranged for photographers to take bespoke greetings cards.   Private photography was only for the rich, then, and people would often pop into studios or hire a professional to commemorate special occasions.  So when these soldiers, at the front somewhere in the 1914-1918 war, posed together in a car, they were having a joke   Notice the "broken" bicycle.  Most of their families and friends back home would not have owned cars, so the novelty would have been even more exciting then than it is now. The original was shot in colour, too, even more impressive !

Hanns Eisler Deutsche Sinfonie : Anti Fascist Cantata

On Sunday, Fabio Luisi conducts Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem at the Barbican. Why "A" German Requiem as opposed to "the" or just plain "German Requiem"? Lots of reasons. An opportune time to consider another "German Requiem", Hanns Eisler's Deutsche Sinfonie  "an Anti-Fascist Cantata", effectively a Requiem for Germany 1933-45 and thereafter, a work which developed in gestation throughout the period, completed only in 1957.  A conventional Requiem would have been out of the question, considering the Holocaust, and in any case Eisler was agnostic. "I wanted", he wrote, "to convey grief without sentimentality", and (to express) "struggle without the use of militaristic music"

Eisler's Deutsches Sinfonie is elegaic, even heroic, but muted. The Präludium sets the mood. Long string lines, rising slowly upwards.  Like smoke "Auferstanden aus Ruinen", though the national anthem of the DDR is, understandably, more upbeat.  Not many national anthems are wreitten by composers like Eisler.  From this haze, hushed voices emerge "O Deutschland, blieche Mutter, wie bist du besudelt mit dem Blut deiner besten Söhne!"  Eisler works in a quote from the Internationale, so the piece connects the defeat of the Nazis and the establishment of the East German state, so the reference to Auferstanden aus Ruinen is quite appropriate and possibly ironic. Though he was unshakeably a Communist, Eisler's individualism and modern tastes in music didn't necessarily endear him to the more conservative forces in the regime.

The mood changes again with the Passacaglia, slippery, wayward woodwinds defying heavy staccato.The text is Bertolt Brecht, An die Kämpfer in den Konzentrationslagern : the "fighters" in the concentration camps, being socialists, dissidents, Jews, gays, and anyone who fell  foul of the Reich.  Like the woodwinds, the alto lines moves in quirky dance-like angles until the choir joins in with more affirmative confidence. The timpani blast, the choir becomes hushed, but the soloist returns, the winds and brass "marching" alongside.  The Étude for orchestra is marvellously compressed - dizzyingly angular lines, interspersed by scurrying, marching figures, trumpets blasting single chords: jazz-age militarism, madly awry but deftly orchestrated. Woodwinds dash ahead of the tumult. Use your imagination and "see" street fighters battling forces of oppression.

Muffled drumstrokes and a funereal march, from which the solo baritone's voice rises, . The song Zu Potsdam, unter der Eichern describes men who are carrying a coffin down the tree-lined streets of Potsdam, the soul of Prussia. The cross is decorated with oak leaves, commemorating those who had fallen in Verdun. It's a political demonstration, the protestors seeking a future "fit for heroes", so the police barge in,smashing things up.  A short, ironic ditty, and bitter.  After the truly haunting Zu  Potsdam, Sonnenberg, where male and female soloists alternate, is relatively straightforward, though the orchestra  screams protest.  Perhaps we need to catch our breath between Zu Potsdam and the Intermezzo which follows. Like the Étude, this section is highly condensed, long, shifting lines, intercut with sprightly passages which thrust the music forward to an eerily quiet resolution. For the time being, that is.

An ominous bass voice introduces the Burial of the Trouble-maker in a zinc coffin.This is a mini cantata, where the bass interacts with soprano, chorus and orchestra.  Who is sealed inside the box? "Wer sich solidarisch erklcrt mit allen Unterdrückten, der soll von nun an bis in die Ewigkeit in das Zink komen wie dieser da, als ein Hertzer und verschart werden".  The "Millionmassen der Arbeit" who agitate for change and are suppressed.  As in the Hollywood Liederbook, Eisler writes cantata with cantata. The Bauernkantata here comprises four individual songs, three of which seem fairly standard "proletarian" in that a bass sings about peasants and peasant revolt.  But Eisler throws a curveball The third song isn't a song so much as an occluded mystery with spoken voices whispering scraps of text in hurried snatches.  "Die Regierung will niht, dass es bekannt wird, es Leute gibt, die den Krieg bekämpfen". (The Government doesn't want it known that there are people who oppose the war)   What do we make of this, particularly in conjuntion with the politically safe farmer songs ?

The Bauernkantata is followed by the Arbeiterkantata, a much more cohesive song which runs more than twice as long as the four songs of the Bauernkantata.  Further contrasts : written for soprano, baritone, choir, spoken voices and orchestra, the song is a sophisticated "art" work with a complex structure.  The text (also Brecht) is interesting because it incorporates shifting ideas. Who is the "Class Enemy"  here?   The protagonist or protagonists have obediently gone to war,  followed orders and welcomed in the new regime.  The generals names change, but the system hasn't.  Is a classless society possible if struggle is part of the system. "Da mag euer Anstreicher dtreichen, diesen Riss streicht er uns nicht zu " (when there are cracks in the foundations of a building, a housepainter, ie Hitler, can't paint them over)

So how do we interpret the Allegro, the longest and most complex of the three orchestral commentaries? Again, long planes of sound, searching and probing, wildly independent woodwind figures darting agilely ahead, defying the drums, rising about massed strings.  And the brief epigrammatiuc Epilog , where the pure,clean voice of the soprano sings as if  in a void, her words echoing those in the Präludium.  The children (of Germany) have been freed "vom eingefrornen Tank" Suddenly the chorus and orchestra interject "Warm them !"

Eisler's Deutsche Sinfonie op 50 is a panorama, with multiple images and allusions, covering an extended time span. A bit like a collage in an art film. Eisler is sometimes written off because his politics made him aware that music should communicate, but he didn't compromise his artistic integrity.   Like the Hollywood Liederbook, the Deutsche Sinfonie is immensely rewarding.  There are several recordings on the market.  The ones to go for are

Lothar Zagrosek with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig on Decca, recorded 1995 with a particularly wonderful Zu Potsdam with Matthias Goerne, easily the best Eisler singer in the business now.  

Max Pommer with the Rundfunks Sinfonie Orchester Berlin, 1987, on Berlin Classics, where Rosemarie Lang is the alto.

Adolf  Fritz Guhl  with the Rundfunks Sinfonie Orchester Leipzig from 1964 which isn't available anymore. I own it but it's stored away in a cupboard I can't reach. Sound quality a bit rough.

Ground-breaking The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny Royal Opera House

Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Royal Opera Hall absolutely breaks new ground, revealing the sophisticated layers of meaning inherent in the opera. Yes, it's political, yes it's about capitalism, consumerism, greed, materialism and false values and the way such things wreak havoc, like the typhoon that flattens Benares. Why Benares, the "Holy City",and not wicked Mahagonny ?

For the first time I realized this had deeper meaning than simply irony.  In a world where "you choose to kick or be kicked", Jenny Smith chickens out and kicks Jimmy McIntyre. Yet he bears no resentment. When Kurt Streit sang Jimmy's death cell soliloquy,  I thought of Billy Budd, redeemed because he dies without rancour.. Some will scream in rage at the execution, where Jimmy hangs as if crucified, but it's  a perfectly valid reading of the score. Brecht and Weill lived in a supposedly Christian society which didn't practice the principal tenets of the faith. Three years after the opera was completed, Weimar descended into the Third Reich. Untrammeled excess and its counterpart of evil. It's not for nothing Weill writes hymn-like tunes into the music. The people of Mahagonny worship Mammon. It's also not for nothing that the three founders of the city pull the strings. As the man behind me perceptively said "The un-Holy Trinity", one of whom is actually called Trinity Moses, a dig at other religions, too.  This Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is not only true to Brecht and Weill but confronts the very evil that makes societies corrupt. Far more danderous than just another parable about greed.

The un-Holy Trinity jump out of a truck, itself a metaphor for consumerism, a machine that keeps moving but that's hollow and can be filled by anything, including fugitives.   The truck is in Brecht's original libretto but lends itself to modern imagery. The backdrop of multi-coloured boxes looks like a container park. Think Sangatte, in Calais, where illegal immigrants hide, smuggling themselves into trucks in the hope of a better life. Wetbacks have usually paid bribes to escape, and often end up worse than whence they came. So Jimmy and his friends from Alaska arrive in Mahagonny with briefcases as shiny as their dreams.

This production also makes far more of Alaska than usual, and for good reason. Alaska stands for pure, unspoiled Nature, where hardship leads to rewards, not only in terms of money but in terms of the true riches of friendship. Sparkly objects flutter down from the ROH ceiling: images of fool's gold, snowfall, and the cleansing nature of the typhoon rainstorm.  We see glimpses of Alaska in the background, pristine in black and white, in contrast the feverish, unnatural neon of Mahagonny, where night and day merge in a drunken haze.There's plenty of colour in Mahagonny.  This set can be a visual feast for the eyes, but, like gluttony, this feast is poisoned. The men watch the girls dance  in a box lit in lurid hues, with fake palm trees and a Liberace pianist who "tickles the ivories" rather than plays. It's all a con to separate men from their money. The woman make money, but pay an even more savage price, invisibly. But all that matters to the crowd is delusion. "Ah ! that's what I call Eternal Art".Unfortunately, some audiences prefer tack to real art.

In Mahagonny, even the Seven Deadly Sins are shortchanged. Like crap commercial advertising, the guiding principles are reduced to four, gluttony, lust, fighting and alcoholic stupor, each neatly vignetted. A particularly vivid Fatty from Peter Hoare in a fat suit. Alaska Wolf Joe is a comically puny-looking  Neal Davies. His moment doesn't last long. He's wiped out in seconds by Trinity Moses (Willard White), who wields a big red punching glove. The game is rigged. Besides, the real fight is not fisticuffs, but the Trial, equally rigged. Killing people is a lesser crime than not paying for three bottles of whiskey. And so Jimmy must die.

This production, directed by John Fulljames and his team, Es Devlin, Christina Cunningham, Bruno Poet , Finn Ross and Arthur Pita, operates on so many different levels., and so radically that it puts to shame the appallingly superficial Los Angeles production which seems to treat the opera as some kind of LA in-joke.  The La Fura dels Baus production, from Madrid five years ago, at least had an edge, and is definitely the better choice. Calixto Bieito, with his political acuiity, could do something really disturbing.  But for ROH audiences, John Fulljames delivers an intelligent interpretation which shows genuine understanding of Brecht and  Weill and their insistence that opera should deal with real issues even though the setting is fantasy.  This is a Rise and fall of Mahagonny which anyone seriously interested in Brecht and Weill could learn a lot from.

Musically, though, this was a bumpy ride.  Mark Wigglesworth's conducting veered from very good to less clearly defined. Weill uses a variety of genres to illustrate the universal relevance of the story, just as Brecht mixes Mahagonny with Benares, Alabama and Havana, Katmandu and Pensacola.

Anne Sofie von Otter has long specialized in singing cabaret, as well as classical, and her Weill songs are highly regarded.  Deservedly, she landed the part of Leocadia, Widow Begbick. She does the spikey, spider-like body language perfectly. But like Leocadia, her voice isn't what it used to be. Sometimes she sings extremely well, getting the slime in the legato. She saved her best work for the ending when the character's venality is at last revealed.  Willard White has been singing Trinity Moses probably more than anyone else in the business now, but his voice,too, is a shadow of what it once was. Neither Brecht nor Weill were bothered about showpiece singing, so it doesn't matter all that much. Suffice that we were  again able to hear and see von Otter and White and respect them for what they could do.

Kurt Streit's Jimmy varied, too, but for good reason. He was superb in his transcendent last soliloquy, rather less forceful earlier on. Yet that, too, is part of Jimmy's personality. He seems like a wimp at first but reveals his true colours when everything's against him. It's not the butch who are strong, but the meek.  I was also impressed with Christine Rice, normally a bit too upper class to be playing a whore. Yet her froideur worked extremely well for Jenny, who does sex for a living, not for pleasure. She could save Jimmy, but like Judas Iscariot, betrays him in his hour of need.

Darren Jeffery sang Bank Account Bill, Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts sang Jack O'Brien, Robert Clark was the piano player, Hubert Francis was Toby, and the booming voiceover was Paterson Joseph. The Girls were Anna Burford, Lauren Fagan, Anush Hovhannisyan, Stephanie Marshall, Meeta Raval and Harriet Williams.

True or false ? Erinnerung an die Marie A

"An jenem Tag im blauen Mond September
Still unter einem jungen Pflaumenbaum
Da hielt ich sie, die stille bleiche Liebe
In meinem Arm wie einen holden Traum!".
 
One day in 1920, Bertolt Brecht happened to be on a train to Berlin and jotted down the words of this poem.  The song, which fits a n old popular tune, has become one of Brecht's "greatest hits". There have been many attempts to explain it. Is it autobiographical?  Is it literary? Or is it one of those things that just pop into one's mind from the unconscious?  Plum trees don't blossom in September, at least not in Germany.  Perhaps seeing a random cloud jogged the memory. Once the poet embraced a woman under a blossong plum tree. He's forgotten the woman's face, and doesn't remember what happened to her  Perhaps the "Frau hat jetzt vielleicht das siebte Kind". Having seven children suggests the end of romance and adventure - perhaps the girl is now hardened and worn, youth vanished, like the cloud the poet glimpsed when his mind should have been on other things. Perhaps the trees have since been chopped down. Clouds are ephemreal: ever changing, transient. As are our lives.

 "Doch jene Wolke blühte nur Minuten
Und als ich aufsah, schwand sie schon im Wind".

Brecht Weill Die Dreigroschenoper Threepenny Opera

Kurt Weill's Die Dreigroschenoper  (Threepenny Opera)  is on at the Royal Festival Hall, part of a "Berlin weekend". How would Bertolt Brecht feel about the opera turned into consumer experience?  Brecht, I suspect would have loved the money. Despite his left-wing rhetoric, he was happy to profit through the work of others. Socialist words, capitalist actions? Read John Fuegi's The Life and Lies of Bertolt Brecht (1994).  Contradictions abound in The Threepenny Opera.  The opera can be presented as style icon for those who want the Weimar Experience as a fashion statement, rather in the way that "Vienna City of Dreams" marketing castrates Viennese culture. Capitalist consumer values contradict the very idea of class war. Ignore the issues in the opera. Publicize your street cred with the right T shirt or tea towel. "Capitalism consumes itself" as some might say. 

Brecht and Weill wanted to communicate with non-musical audiences, so in principle there's no reason why it shouldn't be adapted for different types of audiences. The Los Angeles Rise and Fall of Mahagonny made me cringe with its shallowness, but then shallowness is what the opera depicts. Delicious irony.  In Dreigroschenoper, appearances deceive. Seerabuer Jenny is a servant kicked about by customers in the "lumpige Hotel". But wait! "Ein Schiff mit acht Segeln iund mit funfzig Kannonen" will come and bomb the town. Who will die ? Jenny says, "Alles!"

Macheath is an enigma. He's a sleazeball who always manages to slip away uncaught. MacHeath oozes, like slime, his lines replicated in saxophone and slide trombone. A lounge lizard characterization is good, menace concealed by an air of impenetrable elusiveness. MacHeath gets by because he hunts in camouflage.  He is no comic book thug. He and Tiger Brown were comrades. Posh, but dangerous. The Shark bites!

Although Macheath is the hero/anti hero, the Street Singer holds the whole opera together. The role is not unlike tha tof the Circusmaster in Lulu. Almost certainly Berg knew Die Dreigroschenoper and saw the film made in 1931, directed by G W Pabst.  Berg and Brecht were both familiar with Wedekind. In both operas the menagerie holds humans, trapped by their position in life. Lulu herself, like Macheath, survives by being what others expect her to be. Neither opera is naturalistic, though Pabst's film uses naturalistic sets.

Ernst Busch sang the Street Singer in the 1928 production of Die Dreigroschenoper, and also in the Pabst film. A committed Communist, he didn't leave Europe and ended up a prisoner of the Nazis.  Busch and Hanns Eisler were comrades. Eisler made it to Hollywood, but wrote some of his finest work in exile, inspired by his experience of capiltalism in its most exuberant form. Weill, on the other hand, wrote musicals with vaguely political connections, but nothing like The Threepenny Opera. Eisler also challenged Brecht and tightened his political focus.  The result was Kuhle Wampe, worlds away from The Threepenny Opera. Read more about Kuhle Wampe here, with full download. 

Ernst Busch's performances are so remarkable that he has defined the role and indeed the opera. His voice growls  like a savage beast. Exaggerated "rrrr"s, done with defiant panache. "Messerrrrrr, besserrrrr" .The Street Singer has to sell for a living, so he purrrrrs to attract custiomers,while Macheath nicks their wallets. Or, should we say, adjusts the distribution of wealth?  Of course there can be commercialized, fashion icon Threepenny Operas, but for me, Dreigroschenoper needs to be as sharp as Mackie's knife. (see also my review of  the superlative and very original Deigroschenoper at the Barbican in 2009 HERE. "Bostridge trades fey for Kray". Surprisngly idiomatic cast. A pity that's not on CD

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Rise and Fall of Mahagonny - La Fura dels Baus Madrid

La Fura dels Baus's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at Teatro Real, Madrid is so raw and savage that it hurts. Which is exactly as it should be.

Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill were writing to shock. What could be more pertinent today than a parable of greed and depravity, where the worst crime  a man can commit is to have no money?

Mountainous piles of garbage on the stage, the "desert" the desert of the soul. From the trash emerge strange, half-human creatures. But this is realism. All over the world municipal dumps are where the destitute end up, scavenging an existence from the detritus the rich throw away. Brecht could not have found a better metaphor for the End of Capitalism.

From this arises the City of Mahagonny, with a Rich Man's Hotel. The rubbish piles are covered with green baize but  something's clearly unnatural here. In Spain the image has extra kick, given that huge parts of the country are devastated by irresponsible tourism. Despite cheap alcohol and sex, people keep trying to leave. Even simple Alaskan woodsman Jimmy Macintyre (Michael König) knows that something's wrong if things are too easy.

Excellent new libretto. Translation is free but so sharp it expresses the attack of the original. Brecht would have loved the directness. The Teatro Real Orchestra, conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado, is crisp and unsentimental  As the orchestra pumps up and down rhythms, the chorus and actors pump up and down in sexual orgy. It's depraved, but not indecent because they're emphasizing the mechanical anonymity embedded in the music.

Superb choruses, too. The "chorales" were extremely well done. Everyone knows the "jazz" references in this score but the Madrid chorus understand how much deeper the cultural references go. This is a story where good and bad compete and bad wins. Even God gets trumped. No illusions here that Mahagonny is a "musical". It's cosmic, an atheist struggle of life and death with the brutal message: You Can't Help a Dead Man.  The implication is, do something before it's too late. It's actually an advantage that the chorus are Spanish, they try harder to articulate. 

Michael König is an unusually deep Jimmy, by no means a buffoon. After all, he's the central protagonist. His friends swallow the delusion, but Jimmy does his own thing. Hurricanes don't scare him, the real danger is Man. It's because he's been kind to Alaska-Wolf Joe that he loses everything and is condemned to die. König's Jimmy is much stronger than he lets on, which gives logic to the Final Act.

In a world where "you make your own bed, and choose to stand up or be kicked", he's killed. But he has stood up for his principles, and has "kicked" because he hasn't compromised his innate decency. If he's trapped in the upside down morality of Mahagonny, he can take his leave with dignity because he, unlike everyone else, hasn't sold out.  Wonderful performance - a model for others to learn from.

Measha Brueggergosman is magnificent as Jenny Smith. Few singers have stage presence like she does - once seen, never forgotten. Indeed, she's such a strong personality that it might have inhibited her being cast in mainstrean roles, but her voice has a good range and she has the ability to slip into charcter well. More, please!  Her Jenny operates on several levels at once. "Eine Frau ist keine Tiere!" the words go, but this Jenny moves like an animal, ever vigilant. After all, she's in a jungle where you kill to survive. That ultra-tight bra must have been uncomfortable to wear but that costume fits the persona if not the person. This Jenny's restrained, held in too tightly because she doesn't really know how to "kick" like Jimmy does. The dynamic between König and Brueggergosman is superb. Here Jimmy and Jenny really are a pair, though Jimmy's way ahead emotionally.

Willard White as Trinity Moses is superb - when he takes his clothes off he reveals the physique of a man of 35! He, too, has commanding stage presence: vocally no fancy bits in the part to distract from his menace.  Donald Kaasch's Fatty the Bookkeeper's a thuggish creep, but he, too, has hidden depths. When he takes his shirt off, on his back, there's a magnificent tattoo of an Eygptian God of Judgement. Jane Henschel's Leocadia Begbick looks like a sweet old lady, but watch her eyes slant and glint! Good cameos, too - watch out for John Easterlin (Bank Account Bill) and Otto Katzameier (Jack O'Brien).

Interestingly, the production seems to have been designed around the performance space in Madrid, with relative small floor area but seven tiers rising above. The live audience would have had a lot to look at, but the filming was rather less effective. I couldn't believe it when a camera jerkily panned toward a detail of architecture at the beginning, and shot it out of focus. Surely that was the crest of the Royal House of Spain? I don't think the cameraman meant anything by that. Fortunately there were cameras placed in the rafters to capture the piles of rubbish looming high above the singers. The Metropolis of Mahagonny as Tower of Babel wrought in trash.

The Final Scene shows the cursed people of Mahagonny. Having chosen not to follow God "but their own way", they march with banners on which slogans are written. I don't know Spanish, but in Brecht's original the slogans are both militant and ironic. There's no easy answer to the dilemma of modern capitalism but the main thing is to respond.

Since this was filmed, there'll probably be a DVD, in which case, grab it. La Fura dels Baus led by Alex Ollé and Carlus Padrissa, staged Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre at ENO. Who can forget the gigantic woman, used and abused by all, yet looking outwards with dignified vulnerability? The production reached levels  the opera didn't access: in New York without staging, the full impact might have been lost. Almost certainly, there'll be many eager to reject this production because of the rubbish dump, simulated sex and pig trough orgy, but maybe they should stick to West End feelgoods instead. This Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny packs a punch, and can't be ignored. Just what Brecht and Weill would have loved.

Vienna to Weimar, Kings Place

This week's theme at Kings Place is "Vienna to Weimar" a subject I'm passionately interested in. As usual with Kings Place, top performers are the exception rather than the rule, but there'll be a rare chance to hear the Artis-Quartett Wien on Friday in Berg's famous Lyric Suite and a Zemlinsky String Quartet plus, really interesting, Wellesz and Weigl String Quartets. There's a story behind the Wellesz but let them tell that.

The other big concert for me is the song recital on 27th with Christian Immler, whom I have heard before, but what a wonderful programme. My beloved Eisler! And not the most famous songs, either. If I have time I'll wrote more about this programme because most of it isn't generally familiar, and each of the composers is very different. Lots and lots to talk about. Even the two Goldschmidt songs (Ein Rosenweig and Nebelweben) carry "stories". The Krenek songs come from a cycle I've written lots about over the years. It's one of his best works and should be heard more frequently, but in many ways doesn't really fit into the "Vienna/Weimar" concept though it deals with Schubertian Austria on the verge of Hitler.

There'll also be movies, the new art form of the period. Most of these films are classics, which most people will have seen before, like Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Unfortunately there are many clashes, so if you go to the song concert you'll miss the film of Die Dreigroschenoper. But on the other hand maybe that's not such a loss as the film is softer than the original. There are clips of the film HERE and a commentary.

Ssssh I shouldn't say this if you're buying tickets, but several of the other films have long been available on this site as full downloads, with commentary.

For Die blaue Engel (The Blue Angel) see HERE.

For Berlin : Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt, please see HERE, with a long commentary. At present I'm doing something on black people in France and Germany at the time, There were thousands. A number were fairly successful professional actors, who made movies well into the Nazi period. Not all voluntarily, but still they should be remembered.

There are also films from the Fritz Lang triology about Dr Mabuse. In many ways these are even more fascinating than the more famous Dr Caligari, because the storylines are more complex and Dr Mabuse is a kind of symbol of evil.

Because film was such a new form, there weren't many models to copy, so many films in this era were pioneering. From the start Germans seemed to realize that films could be art as well as short term entertainment. Also on this site you can see Nosferatu, the greatest vampire movie of all, made in 1921/2 when the 1840's were within human memory. Click HERE.

And, of course the very important Kuhle Wampe, with music by Eisler and text by Bertholt Brecht, which is HERE. This is an amazing movie, take time to savour it.

Lots more to come!

Bostridge trades fey for Kray - Dreigroschenoper

Ian Bostridge traded his fey haircut for a slicked-back Kray brothers look, complete with wrap-around dark glasses in this Dreigroschenoper at the Barbican 13.6.09. Bostridge’s lean frame was just right for Macheath, the sleazeball who always manages to slip away uncaught. MacHeath oozes, like slime, his lines replicated in saxophone and slide trombone. So Bostridge’s lounge lizard characterization was very apt, menace concealed by an air of impenetrable elusiveness. Mackie gets away because he conceals himself, like so much implicit in this opera.
Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera or 3d Opera) was first performed as part of the agit prop cabaret world of Brecht and Weill’s Berlin. The 1931 recording and subsequent film (rather too naturalistic) has defined its performance history. It made Lotte Lenya the iconic Weill personality. Dozens of singers have colonised the image since then, as if Lenya’s rough voice was a licence for bad singing. Certainly Brecht and Weill used actors rather than singers in those early years, because they were poor and their politics meant they wanted to reach audiences in clubs, not opera houses. It’s a “Beggar’s Opera” after all. But therein lies the contradiction that makes the piece so interesting. It masquerades as cabaret theatre, but it’s actually quite sophisticated musically. Just as Brecht turns the 18^th century John Gay play on its head, Brecht turns musical genres upside down. The rousing Finale is a Bach Chorale in disguise. This performance was conducted by HK Gruber who also sang Peachum, “the poorest man in the world” who is also The King of the Beggars (another contradiction). Gruber can do sardonic irony better than anyone else, so his approach to 3dO is in a whole other league from the usual straightforward “entertainment” mode. Beneath the cute tunes, Brecht’s message is savage: all the world’s a stage and a mad one at that. So Gruber ropes in Klangforum Wien as his “orchestra”. They are one of the best contemporary music ensembles around and can do “difficult” anytime. Here they are playing banjos, guitars, saxophones and rinky tink piano. And Vienna's Chorus sine nomine, who can do perfect pitch enough to sing with tuning forks, get to do “backing vocals”. Proof of this musically astute approach are the soloists. Luxury casting this: Angelika Kirschlager sings a brilliantly saucy Jenny, slinking like a snake, a perfect partner to Bostridge’s louche Mackie. Dorothea Röschmann’s usual sweetness is here laced with poison – she can act as well as sing. In this performance Polly sings Seeraüber Jenny, not Jenny herself. This works well, because it adds another level of musical cross-dressing More good performances from Florian Boesch as Tiger Brown the dodgy cop and Cora Burggraaf as his daughter, Hanna Schwarz as Mrs Peachum, a coloratura foil to Gruber’s burlesque Peachum. His lines are half speech, half ham, so having a proper singer as his wife is a telling contrast. There’s plenty of proof as to the value of proper voices in Weill. Lotte Lenya was the Tracey Emin of her time, and a sledgehammer persona was probably needed to bring Weill success on Broadway. If the public persona of Brecht and Weill was a caricature, their real message could be packaged in a less overtly political way. In the former East Germany, socialism wasn’t scary, so there was nothing to prove or defend. Thus the DDR Weill performance tradition diverged from the Lenya model. Weill and Eisler were performed by “real” singers like Gisela May and, of all people, Peter Schreier, consummate Mozartean, Bachophile and Liedermeister. These are the recordings to seek out. You can actually hear the words, enunciated with the same precision as there is in the writing. Because Lenya dominated the western market, we’re been persuaded that hers is the only way to do Brecht, and we’re rewarded by pop stars and amateurs who are fun, but not necessarily best placed to reveal the real Weill. Further proof still: here is a clip of a singer doing Seeräuber Jenny in 1931, in French, and almost exactly at the same time as Pabst was filming 3dO in Germany with Lenya, who significantly sings one song only. Margo Lion worked in cabaret but she could actually sing. Lenya scores though for shock value quirkiness.

And even more proof. The ensemble work is extremely tightly written, and takes dexterity to carry over with panache. Especially good was the Kanonen-song, where Bostridge and Boesch bounce off each other with military precision. Here’s a clip of Ernst Busch (as Mack) and Kurt Gerron as Tiger Brown (in military gear). Wonderful – Busch’s sharpness and quick wits serve him well. He’s almost unrecognizable in smooth suit and bowler hat, but that’s the man who spent the war in Nazi KZ’s.

Complete movie to download - Kuhle Wampe

You can see the WHOLE FILM intact below. It is over 1 hour long (not a clip), and can be viewed full screen. Perhaps in times like this we don't need to be reminded how soul destroying it is to be unemployed. How do people keep going? Kuhle Wampe was made in Berlin in the summer of 1932, several years into the last Depression. It's an amazing film, so even though the first part is desolate, it "needs" to be seen again, especially now in difficult times. The full title is Kuhle Wampe oder: Wem gehört die Welt, "Who owns the world". Think about that. Do politicians and crooked bankers own the world or can ordinary people do anything?

Bertolt Brecht wrote the text and Hanns Eisler the music (and a lot of the political rigour). Eisler's music is wonderfully atmospheric. He's completely underrated as a writer of music other than agitprop. This film was made only 5 years after the movies became "talkies", so Eisler's music really is cutting edge invention for its time. Movie music does not have to be sentimental drivel, it can be art. Notice how little dialogue there is : so much is expressed through subtle gesture. No need for translation. This speaks whether you're German, Russian, Spanish. That's the socialist ideal, but it's also profoundly sensitive to how real people function. It's cinéma vérité by instinct, long before the concept was formulated. No wonder Eisler wasn't impressed when he worked in Hollywood.

Even more exceptional is the cinematography. It's outstanding. The first part of the film is a masterpiece, an overwhelmingly moving study, like an elegaic poem told in visual images and music. A young man searches for work. But everyone is unemployed, men everywhere on their bikes, searching for any glimmer of hope. The film shows the bicycle wheels turning endlessly, all that hard work leading nowhere. Long shots of cobbled streets, the tall, forbidding tenement where the man lives. For a moment he pauses to watch street musicians play an eerie mournful melody. We don't know yet but it's his last contact with the world.

Up he trudges to the cramped apartment he shares with his sister, his brutal father and downtrodden mother. Every frame is poignant, even the homily painted over the kitchen stove. The young man looks out of the window, where a shrivelled pot plant struggles to survive. He looks at his watch, his only possession of value, and carefully puts it aside......his mother walks up the endless flights of stairs. The window is open, the flimsy curtain blowing in the breeze. A crowd gathers round the young man's broken body. When I first saw this film as a teenager it was devastating. Now, when the situation has become real to so many, it is physically painful to watch, but steel yourself. It's important. Politicans, bankers and those who think unemployment is a lark should be tied and forced to watch.

The second part of the film focuses on the young man's sister. The family become destitute and get no help. So they move to Kuhle Wampe, a tent city for the homeless on the banks of a lake outside town. Surprisingly, life is not so bad. People stick together, sort of. Real life squatter camps are not much fun. The girl then starts hanging out with socialist idealists. There's a long sequence shot at a real life rally, with sports and music. Helene Weigel, Brecht's wife, appears with her theatre troupe, singing through megaphones. She's the short dumpy brunette. The girl's boyfriend is played by Ernst Busch (who sings the Jesus Revolutionary song in an earlier post). This is historic documentary not simply "film".

Interesting how the golden Aryan physiques on display presage other kinds of party rallies to come in later years, but that was the fashion at the time, nothing sinister.

At the end of this lovely day out, everyone goes back to town. They pour back into the world singing the Solidaritätslied, the now famous "Solidarity Song". Vorwärts und nicht's Vergessen! Forwards, don't forget! Heiner Goebbels (see posts below) has been a huge Eisler fan since his youth. In fact it was Goebbels who introduced Eisler to me ! A few years back Goebbels created a work called Eislermaterial, a composite of Eisler pieces against a wider background.

Nowadays we know about Stalin and Hitler, so we know the solution Brecht and his friends proposed is not quite that simple. But in those difficult times, the dream sustained people as a statement of faith and hope.

See the complete Kuhle Wampe by clicking HERE


OR HERE

Dem Revolutionär Jesus zum Geburtstag

Du sahst Gewalt und Polizei. Du wolltest alle Menschen frei und Frieden auf der Erde. Du wußtest, wie das Elend tut und wolltest alle Menschen gut, damit es schöner werde!

Du warst ein Revolutionär, und machtest dir das Leben schwer....Du hast die Freiheit stets beschützt und doch den Menschen nichts genützt, du kamst an die Verkehrten!

Du kämpftest tapfer gegen sie, und gegen Staat und Industrie. Bis man an dir weil nichts verfing Justizmord, kurzerhand beging...Es war genau wie Heute.

Der Menschen wurden nicht gescheit. Am wenigsten die Christenheit trotz allem Händgefalten. Du hattest sie vergeblich lieb. Du starbst umsonst. Und alles blieb beim alten.

The organ accompaniment sets the context but this isn't really Bach! Ernst Busch, the singer, was a total revolutionary. Growing up in Kiel, he was aware first hand of the naval rebellions that marked the end of the Kaiser's rule. He acted, sang, appeared in cabaret and on the barricades. He was a completely hands-on revolutionary, no armchair dreamer. Busch escaped from Berlin in 1933, the Nazis hot on his trail, and joined the International Brigade in Spain. Eventually the Nazis got him but he survived and became a revered figure in the DDR.

The text is by Erich Kästner, who became famous for kid novels like Emil and the Detectives and Lotte und Lisa (which Disney turned into The Parent Trap) . He wrote lots of poems like this, socially observant and trenchant.

Im weißen Rössl restored

Im weißen Rössl was a huge hit when it premiered in 1930. It merged Austrian folk dance and tunes with jazz and modern rhythms. Risqué too - near naked men prancing about, and some girls, too.

There were ballet sequences, dance acts etc. The whole thing was orchestrated for 250 players, the big string section divided 16 times. Plus a jazz combo and a Tirolean troupe battling out "old" and "new". Presumably shades of Kalman's smash hit, Die Herzogin von Chicago, which pits the Charleston against the czardas, American brashness versus Mitteleuropaische "breeding". People in the 20's and 30's were much sharper than people give them credit for now. Those who wanted to preserve a fake past won out, though, some of them coming to power in 1933.

It was reshaped for right-thinking folks and became "banal family-entertainment in the harmless Disney style - no nudity, no modern rhythms, no nothing". Luckily, the original score has been found and the piece is being staged again in all its irreverent glory, in June 2009 in Dresden.

Read the whole story http://www.operetta-research-center.org/main.php?task=newsart&cat=1&sub_cat=1&id=00086

Rise and Fall of Mahagonny Brecht Weill

The Rise and Fall of Mahagonny opened the Ediburgh Festival this year, conducted by my hero, the inimitable HK Gruber. It's being broadcast by BBC Radio 3, so log on and listen.

Weill’s contribution to the Brecht/Weill partnership is often underestimated, and Weill is more inventive musically than he’s often given credit for. Here are witty set pieces, mock-ups of operatic aria, fake hymns, quasi-pompous marches and bar-room piano rolls, complete with swooping glissandi. Deliberately off-key, of course. Weill uses catchy tunes, so people hum along, hardly realizing they are singing something subversive. And thus Mahagonny insinuates itself into dance band music and pop song, so when people do hear the full Mahagonny, it's eerily familiar. Sentimental tunes for a decidedly unsentimental opera !

HK Gruber is perhaps the perfect conductor ! All his life he's specialized in uproariously manic satire and in the agitprop of the 1930's in particular. If you listen to nothing else of his, grab his recording Roaring Eisler or the recent release of his own FRANKENSTEIN!!!! which I might write about later as there is nothing in this world quite like it. And Gruber is the great grandson of the guy who wrote Silent Night, Holy Night. He really understands the malevolence of Brecht and Weill. He gets punchy playing from the Royal Scottish Orchestra who probably still don't know what hit them ! But perhaps a less staid orchestra might have raised more sparks. Vocally, too, most of this was a bit polite.

Get the DVD of the LA Opera production for more distinctive singing and superlative acting by Patti LuPone and Audra Macdonald. Mahagonny and Los Angeles have a lot in common, which is uncomfortable and this could have been disturbing but what do you expect ? I can imagine the ghosts of Brecht and Weill snorting sardonically at the LA crowd spending big bucks on an anti-capitalist tirade. "There's nothing but today!" sings Jimmy as he's about to die. It's the good guys in Benares who get wiped while Mahagonny is saved, at least until it self-destructs.

Please see the other posts on Brecht, Weill, Eisler and Ernst Busch - click lables. This is my fach, and Busch my hero.