Eisler: Film Music / Kalitzke, Berlin Radio Symphony

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Austrian composer Hanns Eisler is best known for composing the national anthem of the German Democratic Republic, for his long partnership with Bertolt Brecht, and for his film scores. His promising career in Hollywood, however, was interrupted by the Cold War. Film studio bosses blacklisted his music, and he was subjected to two interrogations by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Despite efforts by his American musical powerhouse friends Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, he was deported in 1948. In addition to the Oscar-nominated score for Fritz Lang’s film “Hangmen Also Die,” this release contains other rarely heard works by Hanns Eisler, in which the special interpretation that this pupil of Schoenberg had developed of the twelve-tone technique plays an astonishingly important role for the field of film and orchestral music.

REVIEWS:

Eisler's music bears the stamp of a modern original. Thankfully, recordings of his works are far more plentiful than they once were. The Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin under Johannes Kalitzer do the honors for these works and their dedication gives us what sound to be very fitting performances, spirited and detailed.

-- Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

The composer wrote the first book on composing for film and treated the craft as an art in its own right. His score to Hangmen Also Die was nominated for a 1942 Oscar. The Grapes of Wrath is an alternative score to John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, which was being filmed at the time by John Ford with music by Alfred Newman. Eisler’s work, with a searing twelve-tone lament, is infinitely preferable. And then there is a serialist score for Joris Ivens’s Maiost propaganda film, The 400 Million, again a work of uncompromising power. Beautifully played. We really need to hear more Eisler.

-- Musical Toronto



Product Description:


  • Release Date: March 03, 2017


  • Catalog Number: C5289


  • UPC: 845221052892


  • Label: Capriccio


  • Number of Discs: 1


  • Period: 20th Century


  • Composer: Hanns Eisler


  • Conductor: Johannes Kalitzke


  • Orchestra/Ensemble: Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra



Works:


  1. Hangmen also Die

    Composer: Hanns Eisler

    Ensemble: Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

    Conductor: Johannes Kalitzke


  2. 400 Millionen: Praeludium: Andante con moto

    Composer: Hanns Eisler

    Ensemble: Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

    Conductor: Johannes Kalitzke


  3. 400 Millionen: Variationen über ein marschartiges Thema, "Der lange Marsch"

    Composer: Hanns Eisler

    Ensemble: Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

    Conductor: Johannes Kalitzke


  4. 400 Millionen: Scherzo

    Composer: Hanns Eisler

    Ensemble: Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

    Conductor: Johannes Kalitzke


  5. 400 Millionen: 5 Orchestral Pieces

    Composer: Hanns Eisler

    Ensemble: Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

    Conductor: Johannes Kalitzke


  6. The Grapes of Wrath

    Composer: Hanns Eisler

    Ensemble: Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

    Conductor: Johannes Kalitzke


  7. Kleine Sinfonie, Op. 29

    Composer: Hanns Eisler

    Ensemble: Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

    Conductor: Johannes Kalitzke


  8. Hörfleissübung

    Composer: Hanns Eisler

    Ensemble: Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

    Conductor: Johannes Kalitzke