Eisler: Kleine Symphonie, Bilder aus der 'Kriegesfibel', Suite no. 2,
'Niemandsland"

Eisler and Weill: Brecht settings

Maria Friedman (songs)
Carolyn Foulkes, Andrew Murgatroyd, Stuart MacIntyre (Kriegesfibel)

Robert Ziegler   Conductor

Matrix Ensemble
BBC Singers

This programme was originally announced with Ute Lemper (Ziegler and the
Matrix Ensemble are on her Berlin cabaret songs CD). I dread to think what
she might try to do to Eisler's spare settings of committed words. They
don't have much space for the whoops and gurgles she's been producing
lately.

Maria Friedman is a music-theatre trooper of the old school. She's done
Fosca in Passion and Lisa in Lady in the Dark in London within the past
couple of years, and can do tough and mean, and tough and noble, with the
best of them, as well as over-the-top theatrical, all of which is what the
Brecht settings need.

There was an obvious contrast between Eisler and Weill, highlighted by the
first number, Eisler's setting of Nanna's song, familiarly set by Weill for
Lotte Lenya. Eisler's version is similar in shape, down to the sprachstimme
in the same place, but melodic line is more austere, without the musical
sobs, and ends on descending notes, instead of vergangenen Jahrs flying off
into the air.

The Weill songs were the usual suspects, mainly from the Threepenny opera.
Friedman sang Marc Blitzstein's superb translation, which introduced me to
the work nearly thirty years ago. I've mainly listened to it in German
since, and had forgotten how good Blitzstein's English version is. Friedman
did the full theatrical works, storming about the stage as Jenny (with a
Liverpool accent), zapping the natives in the Cannon song. She also sang a
tormented though not remotely husky Subaraya Johnny.

The Eisler songs were mainly on the didactic side, though still often
moving and effective. To a portable radio evokes the importance of hearing
from the outside world, even when the news is terrible, and comes to a
shocking stop as the radio is suddenly switched off. Settings of two poems,
To those born later, reflect on the need to justify your life even if you
don't achieve anything except making life a little less easy for tyrants.
The Song of the Nazi soldier's wife, the Madam's song and the Balland of
Marie Sanders, the Jews' whore, are closer to carabet style, but the music
is more directly expressive of the cynicism and brutality of their themes
than anything Weill would have written.  The Song of the German mother was
the only encore, to powerful effect when the audience was expecting Mack
the knife.


Bilder aus der 'Kriegesfibel' is a setting for soprano, tenor, baritone and
male chorus, of fourteen verses selected from those Brecht wrote to
accompany pictures in a scrapbook he kept of news photographs of the war.
Eisler, who liked sujets trouves like this, set the words after Brecht's
death in 1957, in a style similar to his marching choruses.

There are some good, typically Brechtian, verses. To go with a photo of a
woman searching the ruins of bombed buildings in Liverpool, set as an
andante carabet song:

 Stop searching, woman: you will never find them
 But, woman, don't accept that fate is to blame.
 Those murky forces, woman, that torment you
 All have a face, an address and a name.

And a heroic baritone with chorus:

 I hear the men of Downing Street accuse you
 Saying you stuck it out, so it's your fault.
 They may be right, but when did they last choose to
 Chide people's strange reluctance to revolt?

John Willets' translations of the Eisler songs, and of Bilder aus der
'Kriegesfibel', were servicable, but still clearly work in progress. ("Cash
makes you randy"?) There were substantial improvements in both sense and
singability between the version in the programme and the performed version.


The Matrix Ensemble also gave delightful performances of Weill's Kleine
Symphonie, and of the Niemandsland suite, based on film music, with its
exuberant second movement Capriccio on Jewish folk songs (Eisler at his
least depressive) and its totally infectious last movement march.