To hope   Schubert & Eisler

Holger Falk and Steffen Schleiermacher spent three years on a pioneering project devoted to the songs of Hanns Eisler, one of the most important 20th century composers of lieder. They have released a selection on four highly acclaimed CDs.

In the course of his life, Eisler wrote well over 300 lieder, songs and ballads. For musik+, the two musicians cover a wide range of his works written between 1932 – the beginning of his years of exile – and his return to Vienna and the period shortly before his death in East Berlin. They are primarily based on poems by Bertolt Brecht, with whom he maintained a lifelong artistic friendship. Many of the lieder are about exile, about life on the run, and his thoughts on the present and future. As a pupil of Schönberg, Eisler was encouraged to explore Schubert’s lieder. That shaped his subsequent works, leaving unmistakable influences in terms of text arrangement, melody of the language, and piano accompaniment. The concert presents a dialogue with Schubert’s late lieder using texts by Heinrich Heine. They point forward in time; the boundaries of the centuries are blurred.

Holger Falk – baritone
Steffen Schleiermacher – piano