Lieder von Jacques Brel

Album review

Although in America it is common to associate the songs of Kurt Weill with the voice of his wife, Lotte Lenya, in Germany Weill's music is just as readily reckoned with the singing actress once the star attraction of the Berlin Ensemble, Gisela May. Eterna's Brecht-Songs mit Gisela May uses poet Bertolt Brecht, rather than Weill, as its point of departure, and focuses in particular on Brecht's early texts; the dates given with the titles connote that of the composition of the poetry, not the music. Weill is heard in only two numbers, "Vom entrunkenen Mädchen" and "Zu Potsdam unter den Eichen," both from his Berliner Requiem (1927), of which the score had only lately been rediscovered when May recorded this album in 1968. The balance of the material consists mostly of settings by Hanns Eisler and there are no settings by Paul Dessau, who only worked with Brecht on his later projects. A handful of early Brecht texts lacking authentic musical settings are given over to composers considered "contemporary" in 1960s East Germany, none of whose names seem familiar in retrospect. Outside of the one for "Lied der verderbten Unschuld beim Wäschefalten" by Rudolf Wagner-Régeny, composed in 1950 at Brecht's request, these latter-day settings seem neither characteristic of Brecht nor in themselves very imaginative, although annotator Peter Deeg admits as much in the liner notes.
Deeg's notes are excellent, and necessary; rather than trying to put forth Brecht-Songs mit Gisela May with its original, inaccurate note, Deeg attempts to place the album in the proper historical context, which is a rather complex matter. Always an ardent communist, Brecht was chased out of the United States by the House on Un-American Activities Committee; he happily returned to communist East Berlin only to discover that life wasn't as idyllic there as he expected it would be. Brecht died in 1956, and the Berlin Ensemble represented his legacy most closely until its closure in 1999; in 2007, the company that bore his name continues to perform a lot of Brecht and it has a very different focus and purpose than that prescribed by its founder. Eterna's Brecht-Songs mit Gisela May represents the ongoing legacy of Brecht at a decade's distance and will prove of strong interest to those who follow the vicissitudes of German theater. To others, while Gisela May is a first-class diseuse, her scrappy, deliberately un-pretty singing voice might prove an acquired taste.

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