Recordings

In 1942, Hanns Eisler, the German composer newly arrived in Hollywood (after a stint in New York) set 36 poems, mostly by Brecht, that concerned the emigre experience. And they are hardly optimistic. Brecht hated it here. “This city has made me realize,” one song begins, “Paradise and hell-fire are the same city.” Eisler, whose leftist views got him deported by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948, seems no more cheerful. Each word in the “Songbook” resounds in atonal, stinging music, far less friendly than the much more populist Brecht-Eisler collaborations for the theater. But the songs capture Brecht’s permanent bad mood with arresting force at a time when the other emigres did their best to publicly hide their own despair, not wanting to seem ungrateful for freedom. Goerne’s performance is exceptional.

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