Das Killer Kollektiv Beryy Eisler

Between the Great Depression and the Third Reich the committed communist endeavoured to exercise influence with his music as his medium. On the first volume of MDG's edition of Hanns Eisler’s songs, Holger Falk and Steffen Schleiermacher present pieces from the years between 1929 and 1937 for which Bertolt Brecht supplied almost all the texts. A long-overdue rehabilitation of a composer who for many years was known above all as the German Democratic Republic’s artistic spokesman!

Composers Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler had great success with their songs, creating an unmistakable style that has remained unique with its mixture of popular music, supreme musical sophistication and political claims. Salome Kammer is a versatile artists and an ideal advocate of this music.

MDG is delighted to announce the second volume of their critically acclaimed Eisler Lieder recordings. In 1948 Hanns Eisler returned to Europe from exile in the United States, where he had found refuge from the National Socialist regime. On his return he found hardly any traces of the Germany he had left in 1937 and expressed his feelings of grief and loss in many choice songs ? some of which Holger Falk and Steffen Schleiermacher have selected for the enthralling and exemplary program on this second volume of their Eisler edition.

Hanns Eisler composed more than five hundred songs, and his very first extant compositions include songs with piano accompaniment. On the fourth and last volume of their selections from Eisler’s songs, Holger Falk and Steffen Schleiermacher focus on his early works and bring to light an absolutely astonishing discovery: the young Hanns was an autodidact who had an incredible feel for the song part, and his artistic aspirations are also evident in the piano part.

The graceful, expressive and witty Duo for Violin and Cello by Hanns Eisler, written when the composer was 26 years old, is a multifaceted work showcasing the composer’s brilliant intellect. Best-known for his long artistic association with playwright Bertolt Brecht, Eisler always took care to make a deep connection with his audience.

The program of Vol. 3 of the successful and critically acclaimed Hanns Eisler project by Holger Falk and Steffen Schleiermacher 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 organised collection of occasional pieces what is certainly the most important song cycle of the twentieth century.

After a short hiatus, The Gaslamp Killer has returned with turbulent, moody, and gorgeous symphonies on his third full-length album, Heart Math. An intense and emotional masterpiece, it reaffirms why he remains one of the best DJs and instrumental hip-hop producers of his generation. This is a work conceived and creative with every last ounce of love and pain, all of it made in turmoil and psychic unrest, with music providing the only form of solace or opportunity to find even a fleeting moment of happiness. It is as pure as catharsis gets. Heart music to survive a season in hell.