Deutsche Sinfonie, Op. 50, is a composition for soloists, chorus and orchestra by Hanns Eisler. Despite the title, it is considered to be more in the style of a cantata than a symphony. [1] Principally composed between 1935 and 1947, but not completed until 1957, it is an eleven-movement setting of poems by Bertolt Brecht, drawn mainly from Brecht's Songs, Poems and Choruses of 1934, and by Ignazio Silone, adapted by Eisler. It was premiered in its full form at the Berlin State Opera, East Berlin, on 24 April 1959. [2] Brecht had died in 1956.
Eisler's theme was the advance of Nazism in Germany. Yet the composer encountered difficulties in both reception and performance of the work throughout its long period of composition and development. When the first two movements (at this stage subtitled An Anti-Hitler Symphony) won a prize at the 15th Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music, gaining a promised performance of them at the 1937 Paris World Exhibition, the Nazi regime persuaded the French government to have the performance cancelled. [3]
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed productions such as his best-known work, The Threepenny Opera, which included the ballad "Mack the Knife". Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose, Gebrauchsmusik. He also wrote several works for the concert hall and a number of works on Jewish themes. He became a United States citizen in 1943.
Catulli Carmina is a cantata by Carl Orff dating from 1940–1943. He described it as ludi scaenici. The work mostly sets poems of the Latin poet Catullus to music, with some text by the composer. Catulli Carmina is part of Trionfi, the musical triptych that also includes the Carmina Burana and Trionfo di Afrodite. It is scored for a full mixed choir, soprano and tenor soloists, and an entirely percussive orchestra – possibly inspired by Stravinsky's Les noces – consisting of four pianos, timpani, bass drum, 3 tambourines, triangle, castanets, maracas, suspended and crash cymbals, antique cymbal, tam-tam, lithophone, metallophone, 2 glockenspiels, wood block, xylophone, and tenor xylophone/low xylophone.
Hanns Eisler was a German-Austrian composer. He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artistic association with Bertolt Brecht, and for the scores he wrote for films. The Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin is named after him.
The Mother is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. It is based on Maxim Gorky's 1906 novel of the same name.
Hans Krása was a Czech composer. He was killed during the Holocaust at Auschwitz-Birkenau. He helped to organize cultural life in Theresienstadt concentration camp.
The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (DSO) is a German broadcast orchestra based in Berlin. The orchestra performs its concerts principally in the Philharmonie Berlin. The orchestra is administratively based at the Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) Fernsehzentrum in Berlin.
Harald Genzmer was a German composer of classical music and an academic.
Lothar Zagrosek is a German conductor. As a youth, he sang in the Regensburg Cathedral choir, including performances as the First Boy in The Magic Flute at the 1954 Salzburg Festival. From 1962 to 1967, Zagrosek studied conducting with Hans Swarowsky, István Kertész, Bruno Maderna and Herbert von Karajan.
René Pape is a German operatic bass. Pape has received two Grammys, was named "Vocalist of the Year" by Musical America in 2002, "Artist of the Year" by the German opera critics in 2006, and won an ECHO award in 2009.
The Flight across the Ocean is a Lehrstück by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, inspired by We, Charles Lindbergh's 1927 account of his transatlantic flight in the plane Spirit of St. Louis. Written for the Baden-Baden Music Festival, it was originally entitled Lindbergh's Flight and premiered in 1929 with music by Kurt Weill and Paul Hindemith in a broadcast by the Frankfurter Rundfunk-Symphonie-Orchester under the direction of Hermann Scherchen and produced by Ernst Hardt.
Max Reger's 1915 Requiem, Op. 144b, is a late Romantic setting of Friedrich Hebbel's poem "Requiem" for alto or baritone solo, chorus and orchestra. It is Reger's last completed work for chorus and orchestra, dedicated in the autograph as Dem Andenken der im Kriege 1914/15 gefallenen deutschen Helden.
Günter Kochan was a German composer. He studied with Boris Blacher and was a master student for composition with Hanns Eisler. From 1967 until his retirement in 1991, he worked as professor for musical composition at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler". He taught master classes in composition at the Academy of Music and the Academy of Arts, Berlin. He was also secretary of the Music Section of the Academy of Arts from 1972 to 1974 and vice-president of the Association of Composers and Musicologists of the GDR from 1977 to 1982. Kochan is one of eleven laureates to have been awarded the National Prize of the GDR four times. In addition, he received composition prizes in the US and Eastern Europe. He became internationally known in particular for his Symphonies as well as the cantata Die Asche von Birkenau (1965) and his Music for Orchestra No. 2 (1987). His versatile oeuvre included orchestral works, chamber music, choral works, mass songs and film music and is situated between socialist realism and avant-garde.
Siegfried Köhler was a German composer in the German Democratic Republic.
Fidelio Friedrich "Fritz" Finke was a Bohemian-German composer.
Nikos Athineos is a Greek conductor, composer and pianist with a long career as conductor in significant theaters and orchestras of Germany, first Artistic Director of Thessaloniki Concert Hall for ten years, director of Athens Conservatory.
Paul Kurzbach was a German composer.
Erhard (Eberhard) Ragwitz is a German musicologist, composer, and lecturer. From 1986 to 1989, he was the rector of the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler".
Hermann Wunsch was a German composer, conductor, music theorist and lecturer in composition.
Rolf Kleinert was a German conductor.