Poetic Songs of Exile Soar in ‘Hollywood’

Hollywood had a chance to look at itself through the eyes of a German exile Tuesday at Temple Israel in Hollywood, when baritone Matthias Goerne and pianist Eric Schneider performed selections from Hanns Eisler’s “Das Hollywooder Liederbuch,” “The Hollywood Songbook.”

Eisler was a composer who fled Hitler and settled in Los Angeles in 1942, only to run afoul of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. He eventually returned to Berlin as a voluntary deportee and settled in the Soviet sector.

The “Hollywood Songbook,” written in 1942 and 1943, collects a number of compositions that set texts by Eisler’s friend and fellow emigre Bertolt Brecht, but there are also entries based on the work of 19th century German poets Goethe, Holderin and others. The music is serious, lean and sharply etched, with economy of means. Every note tells, and though there is an occasional hint of cabaret style, the songs definitely continue the great Schubert-Schumann-Wolf art song tradition. They are expressive but formal, more dignified than sentimental.

There are a few whacks at the superficiality of the film industry and a cry from the heart about the artist having to sell his soul to earn a living. But the dominant themes are the pain of exile, the progress of the war and the suffering of the poor. All in all, the work is less about Hollywood per se than about the emigre experience here.

The 31-year-old Goerne, who proved in his Southern California recital debut Sunday in Irvine that he is a major talent, again showed resplendent technique and deep dramatic resources, whether grimly eulogizing soldiers drowned at sea, envisioning a more hopeful but elusive future or adopting the various “voices” in the Goethe text, “Der Schatzgraber” (The Treasure-Seeker).

Unfortunately, all 37 texts of the songs sung were not provided, presumably to hold the program to four pages. Sometimes there were just summaries. They were helpful, but the particulars would have been more interesting.

Schneider provided consistently lucid and sensitive support in his very difficult part.

Each member of the audience received a sampler disc of London’s complete “Hollywood Liederbuch” performed by Goerne and Schneider, to be released in the fall as part of that label’s Entartete Musik series.

The recital was jointly sponsored by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Villa Aurora Foundation for European-American Relations.