As a Swiss composer, Arthur Honegger was probably the bird of paradise among the Paris composers of the "Groupe des Six". The fact that he managed to combine the simplicity and plainness demanded above all by Jean Cocteau with his fascination for Wagner and Debussy indicates a strong personality. It is also reflected in his numerous song compositions and can be experienced wonderfully in the selection that Holger Falk and Steffen Schleiermacher have made for their latest album - including many a surprise. As with the other Five of the "Groupe des Six", Honegger preferred to set contemporary poems to music; Apollinaire and Claudel were particularly popular. But older texts also seem to fascinate him: The wonderfully purring stories by Saluste du Bartas and Pierre de Ronsard transport us into a baroque world in which biting irony and the most serious passion can hardly be distinguished. Honegger - unlike his colleagues - was also fond of the large symphonic form, including some stage successes. Some of this can be found in his songs; the early "Quatre Poèmes" surprise with harmonic opulence, far from any neo-classical attitude. Even at a ripe old age, the composer still counted these pieces among his best. The works presented here by Falk and Schleiermacher with an unerring sense for fine nuances span an entire composer's life. The consistently demanding piano part remains a constant and creates an atmosphere with sometimes almost endless, yet never obtrusive ostinati, on which Holger Falk's supple baritone can unfold most beautifully.

Despite a certain inner distance to the Communist regime, Rudolf Wagner-Régeny was considered one of the most distinguished artistic personalities in East Germany. Karl Böhm and Herbert von Karajan were only two of the distinguished conductors to champion his music. Although he himself was not regarded as a stylistic pioneer, the way Wagner-Régeny took up and blended old and new elements formed a highly individual musical diction that might well be defined as a personal style. Genesis (1955/56) is a blend of oratorio and cantata. It was written prior to East Germany’s ambivalent attitude towards the church. The latter represented the strongest opposition to the regime and was discriminated mainly during Walter Ulbricht’s tenure as the chairman of the Central Committee.

The program of Vol. 3 of the Hanns Eisler project by Holger Falk and Steffen Schleiemacher- a meritorious endeavor that has already earned them various prizes- features songs from this composer’s American exile. The Hollywood Songbook is a major work, even if measured solely by its length and total of thirty-two pieces. Moreover, the concentration and intensification of the content attained by Eisler while he was residing on the Pacific Coast make this rather loosely organized collection of occasional pieces what is certainly the most important song cycle of the twentieth century. Unlike many other exiles, Eisler was extremely successful in California, both artistically and financially. In the expanding entertainment industry there was an increasing demand for new film music, which Eisler supplied both willingly and reliably. His songs reveal the other side of his life in exile: yearning for home, reluctance to come to terms with his fate, and the insecurity of his life in exile. Once again Bertoit Brecht authored a great many of these impressive texts. The precise length of the Hollywood Songbook and the order of its titles are not entirely clear. The usual order of the thirty-two songs was not presented in full until 1982, forty years after Eisler’s death. Holger Falk and Steffen Schleiermacher complement this extensive cycle with some pieces from their temporal and topical context. The result is a most deeply moving, stellar song performance, presented with profound sympathy but without any edifying kitsch.

In the last years of his life, John Cage wrote a great many so-called "Number Pieces" the title indicating the number of performing musicians. While most of these pieces indicate which instruments are to be played, as well as the sounds that are to be produced, other pieces offer only general tone descriptions or a framework for choosing the tones oneself. What these pieces do have in common is time\-organization: Cage designates the measure within which the tones must be played. Should one play these sound\-sequences within the interval quickly, then one must wait for the beginning of the next measure in order to continue; should one play with an even slowness, the separate intervals are joined without interruption. And so, each performance of the same piece is different: in one instance an even flow of sounds, in another a pulsation of rapid responses accompanied by pauses (including all variations). An exception is "Two²". Here the two pianists do not play according to a stopwatch, but rather by reacting to one another: Although the piece indicates measure, it does not assign tempo or even pulse. While both interpreters play independently of each other, they may continue on to the next measure only when the other player has finished his. Cage decided on the number of tones within a measure by drawing upon the rules of Renga, Japanese linked poetry, in which the number of syllables per verse are set at 5, 7, 5, 7, 7. As the pedal is continuously depressed, the notes sound into one another and this inner structure remains undetected.

The song oeuvre of Darius Milhaud is almost unmanageable. Holger Falk and Steffen Schleiermacher approach this huge convolute with a first selection that already shows the entire breadth of Milhaud's compositions - from humorous cabaret pieces to serious songs, from extended cycles to occasional works "thrown down" with a nimble hand. Throughout his long life, Milhaud remained faithful to tonality. He followed atonality and twelve-tone music of his contemporaries with interest, without ever applying it even on a trial basis. Nevertheless, the simultaneous sounding of different tonalities became almost a trademark of Milhaud - along with his preference for exciting borrowings from distant peoples and exotic rhythms. The "Vocalise-Étude" in 5/8 time sounds more like a South American dance than a vocal exercise; "Dans les Rues de Rio" contains a variety of acoustic memories of a stay in Brazil's capital; the "Soirées de Pétrograd", based on recordings by Russian emigrants, seems almost cartoonish-cabaret-like. And the text is always in the foreground. Milhaud leads the words with his music to a new sphere - to be observed especially well in the "Poèmes juifs". Holger Falk, with his highly flexible voice, knows excellently how to shape this expansion of meaning, and he is supported by Steffen Schleiermacher, who is as sensitive to sound as he is expressive on the contemporary Steinway.

Like Arnold Schönberg, Josef Matthias Hauer composed "with twelve tones" - but with a very different result! If dissonance, harmonic tension, and the highest degree of expressivity mark the musical process in Schönberg, then Hauer's music is free of all of the above. Of absolutely airy lightness, of extraordinary song character, and often concluding with euphonious major triads, Hauer's preludes and melodies recorded here for the first time in complete form by Steffen Schleiermacher offer a compendium of this composer's musical philosophy.