Neuberger HEW: Songs and Suppression: A Musical Journey out of Exile

Through an exploratory program of art songs by Jewish-German composers, Jewish-German pianist Constanze Beckmann and Singaporean Chinese-Canadian baritone Samuel Chan explore topics of xenophobia, racism, exile, and personal/artistic suppression through the contrasting musical styles of the late Romanticism of Walter Braunfels with the serialism, atonalism, and jazz influences of Hanns Eisler’s Hollywood Songbook.

This German Lieder program, titled ‘Songs and Suppression: A Musical Journey out of Exile’, explores and contrasts the revived music of Jewish-German composers Walter Braunfels and Hanns Eisler. It showcases the musical and artistic language of these two composers, with particular focus on how religious and ethnic persecution influenced their musical language and ideology.

The performance is preceded by a biographical short film about the lives of these two composers, who were both forced to flee their homes due to the anti-semitism of Nazi Germany, and whose works were informed by their respective stories of exile.

This performance is sponsored by the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany and accessible free of charge as part of the Canadian Opera Company’s Free Concert Series in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.