The composer Hanns Eisler can with some justification be described as a tragic figure in the history of music.

Ostracized and persecuted because of his origins and his political convictions, limited in his actual significance ultimately by the political circumstances of divided Germany, he is initially remembered primarily as the composer of the music for the national anthem of the former German Democratic Republic. The true significance of his multifaceted oeuvre has only been recognized and duly appreciated in more recent times.

He is now considered one of the most influential German composers of the 20th century. In contrast to his teacher Arnold Schoenberg, he understood music above all as a tool for the political and public development of influence.

On this new recording, Valerie Eickhoff (soprano) and Eric Schneider (piano) present the Hollywood Songbook by Hanns Eisler.

After the traumatic experience of World War I, Eisler became a private pupil of Arnold Schonberg in Vienna from 1919-1923, and it was during this period that Eisler's extremely fruitful friendship with Bert Brecht began, a friendship that would last a lifetime and produce several fruitful collaborations. Hanns Eisler had to flee Germany from the Nazis in 1933 but eventually found permanent refuge in the United States from 1938 onwards, where he worked closely with Bertolt Brecht again - although not until 1942, after the latter's arrival in the USA.

Winner of the 2022 Sudwestrundfunk Junge Opernstars competition, mezzo soprano Valerie Eickhoff is quickly establishing herself as an artist of intense musicality and brilliant vocalism.