Jan Friedl sings Brecht

It is Brecht the poet we hear through the songs. He wrote poetry all his life, long before the plays and until his death, and remains, arguably, the foremost German poet of the century. His interests were wide, his observations acute, and his grip on the language strong but subtle. He chose musical collaborators with the same care and cunning as his theatrical ones. His own interest in music was sustained and knowledgeable, and he exerted considerable influence on the composers who worked with him. Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau produced much of their best work with Brecht.

The songs take in many of the musical idioms and techniques of the early twentieth century, from twelve-tone writing by the Schoenberg pupil and Marxist Hanns Eisler through rhythmically complex and Eastern European-influenced pieces. They capture the precariousness of a dizzy, overheated European society and the nightmare of the real Mahagonny that was to come. Sweet and bitter conversations tell of our times, and of us.