Customer Reviews

Symphonies Op. 29 & 69

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have long been a fan of the Weill and Eisler cabaret songs of the '20s and '30s, but I was entirely unfamiliar with Eisler's concert music. After I recently learned that Eisler had been a student of Arnold Schoenberg, I decided that it was time to discover it. These orchestral works have a compelling Schoenbergian sound, with occasional dodecaphony, but remain wholly Eislerian. There are familiar themes from Eisler's show songs. There is some great organ playing in the Kammer-Sinfonie, too. While Weill's orchestral works, disk one of Sym 2/Seven Deadly Sins/Songs, are somewhat spotty, Eisler's orchestral works have significant appeal. This is a great résumé of Eisler's orchestral oeuvre that is worth considering.

Hanns Eisler's great passion in life was music that could communicate. His experiments in the twelve-tone method he learned from his teacher, Schoenberg, show that this style--which is still opaque to many concert goers even after nearly eighty years as a musical idiom--can reach the listener on more than an intellectual plane.

The brief "Chamber Symphony" is identical in orchestration to Eisler's film score for "White Flood"--a 1941 documentary on the Arctic Ocean. Using electronic instruments (which in the early 40s was an unusual move for a classical composer)in combination with a small chamber orchestra, the music communicates the slow but powerful forces that shaped the Arctic ice sheet.

The equally brief "Small Symphony" was composed during a break during a time when Eisler was otherwise occupied with revolutionary politics in Weimar-Republic Berlin. Combining avant-garde with traditional tonality, it is one of the composer's most engaging works.