Kurt Weill
Berlin im Licht

Hanns Eisler
Ballade von der Krüppelgarde Op. 18 No. 1

Hanns Eisler
Rückkehr zur Natur

Kurt Weill
Bilbao Song (from Happy End)

Kurt Weill
Zu Potsdam unter den Eichen (from Das Berliner Requiem)

Hanns Eisler
Zeitungsausschnitte Op. 11

Kurt Weill
Song von Mandeley (from Happy End)

Hanns Eisler
Ballade von den Säckeschmeißern Op. 22 No. 4

Kurt Weill
Lied von der Unzulänglichkeit menschlichen Strebens (from Threepenny Opera)

Hanns Eisler
Aberglauben-Couplet (from the incidental music for Johann Nestroy's Höllenangst)

Hanns Eisler
Des is a politischer Herr (from the incidental music for Johann Nestroy's

Eulenspiegel)Kurt Schwertsik
Da Uhu schaud me so draurech au (from Sieben Wienerlieder Op. 20)

Kurt Weill
Song of the Rhineland

Arnold Schoenberg
Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte for Sprechstimme, Piano, and String Quartet Op. 41

Hanns Eisler
Rosen auf den Weg gestreut

Rarely in European history have art, entertainment, and political activism been more closely intertwined than in the years of the Weimar Republic. Composer, conductor, and singer HK Gruber, a renowned expert for this musical era, and pianist Kirill Gerstein explore a time of radical social change in songs by Hanns Eisler and Kurt Weill. The program’s second half is dedicated to Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon, another musical manifesto against tyranny, based on a scathingly satirical poem by Lord Byron and written in 1942–3 during the composer’s American exile.