St Hugh’s College is delighted to invite you to a recital and reading of poems and songs by Bertolt Brecht in new English translations by Tom Kuhn and David Constantine.
As well as his importance as a playwright, Brecht is one of the great poets of the twentieth century with an astonishing range, both in subject matter and in poetic forms.
The programme ‘Songs of Exile and War’ is designed to give an introduction to Brecht’s work as a poet and song-writer, and to provide a sketch of his life in turbulent times in anti-Nazi exile in Europe and America. The evening’s programme follows an afternoon symposium which will draw together UK scholars working on Brecht. The day’s events are conceived as a ‘launch-party’ for a major research project, ‘Writing Brecht’, concerned with the translation, edition and reception of Brecht in the English-speaking world, and led by Tom Kuhn.
The recital will feature the music of Brecht’s long-term collaborator Hanns Eisler, interpreted and performed by Dominic Muldowney, alongside professional actors and singers.
The poems in the programme include: Bad times for lyric poetry, motto to the Svendborg Poems, To those born later, Questions of a worker who reads, The plum tree, Buying oranges, Ballad of the Jew’s whore Marie Sanders, Spring 1938, Visit to the banished poets, poems from German War Primer, two sonnets, Children’s Crusade 1939, Song of a German mother, four quatrains from War Primer, Homecoming, epilogue to Arturo Ui, Children’s anthem, And I always thought ...
Tom Kuhn teaches modern German literature at the University of Oxford and is a Fellow of St Hugh’s College. He is one of the leading scholars of Brecht in the English-speaking world and a general editor of the main English-language Brecht edition.
David Constantine is an acclaimed poet and translator whose work is regularly featured by the BBC. He has published several volumes of poetry (most recently Nine Fathom Deep in 2009), a novel (Davies – 1985), and four collections of short stories.
Dominic Muldowney is well known for his film and television scores, radio works and incidental music for the theatre. He has a particularly close relationship with the music of Hanns Eisler, which will be featured.