Heiner Goebbels: 'Eislermaterial' - Revolutionary concepts

Hanns Eisler was a stalwart of socialist East Germany, which surely makes his music unpromising material for Heiner Goebbels to update for 21st-century sensibilities. Not so, says Rob Cowan

"Don't illustrate your feelings but comment on them musically. Be objective." Not exactly sexy thoughts but then Hanns Eisler had no stomach for mindless self-indulgence. As a Schoenberg student, film composer and musical stalwart of socialist East Germany (he even wrote the East German national anthem) Eisler held his head high but kept his heart at street level. Something of a local hero then, and an ideal candidate for a modern re-interpretation. Which is precisely what Heiner Goebbels provides with his uplifting Eislermaterial, one of the musical high points of the late 1990s.

Goebbels takes Eisler at his word, "commenting" by allusion, gesture, violent musical juxtapositions and some ingenious sound painting. Nothing is tawdry or gratuitous and the texts, mainly by Bertholt Brecht, have a biting, straight-to-the-heart quality that cries out for the sort of tangy treatment Goebbels gives them. Eisler-Goebbels switches from Twenties-style ferocity to understated melancholy, often segueing on the back of instrumental squawks, shudders or scrapes. Think in terms of Kurt Weill visited by Michael Nyman and Uri Caine, then refined and refashioned in a style that is very much Goebbels' own. Rather than employ a trained singer for the various songs Goebbels opts for an actor, Josef Bierbichler, whose tender but frail vocalising invariably suits the mood.

First up is a homely mix, mainly of voices, brass and harmonium, for a "Children's Anthem" where the prevailing sentiment is love of home. The first shock is targeted at around seven minutes, a Weill-style rampage, brass-topped and hard driven, at least initially. A plethora of eerie sounds leads us to a mellow andante for strings, a double bass solo and a lament for the land left behind. "Four Lullabies for Working Mothers" centre on survival, political faith, defiance and equality, all sombre but catchy, much as Weill himself so often is. The last leads into the first of two three-way "Audio Dramas" where the voices of Eisler himself and an interviewer ricochet at three points along the spectrum. "I lived in London, Abbey Road – and Brecht lived opposite – one thing I do know, there are going to be tremendous changes. It's dying not abstractly, it's actually dying". And so on (in German of course) until the troublesome "Grey Goose" falls from the sky bringing misery with it.

Goebbels conjures a deliciously dark "Mother Beimlein", who "brings strangers home" and opens the door with a key hooked onto her wooden leg. There's a plea to freshen the grasses, a second round of "Audio-drama", a raucous Mayday march and a meditation on suicide. But perhaps the most telling place to sample is "War Song" (track 19), a pithy, semi-ironic chorus that rails against excess, turns into a bawdy brass dance, crescendos like a mounting protest and shifts suddenly into top gear. The work's ending is just as sudden, a brief but touching Altenberg text that asks why even in the face of relative fortune we are still not happy. Eislermaterial combines the best elements of music theatre with an inward brand of drama normally associated with chamber music. It's a genuine class production, a concept album of the highest order, superbly performed and vividly engineered. I cannot imagine that any sensitive listener will fail to respond.

Heiner Goebbels: 'Eislermaterial' – Josef Bierbichler, Ensemble Modern (ECM New Series 1779)