About this Recording

The first volume in this series traced the inter-war craze for carefree dance music in Austria and the Czech Lands (see GP813). This latest album focuses on Germany where jazz-influenced music flourished from the mid-1920s onwards even in the face of some social, political and racial opposition. Cabarets and dancehalls rejected this nationalist resistance and the Weimar Republic rejoiced in a cross-pollination of symphonic jazz and Kunstjazz – a fusion of dance and classical elements. The many previously unrecorded pieces here chart the progress of this vigorous musical rejuvenation.

Eugen d’Albert

Public Domain

Siegfried Borris

Private Collection

Fidelio F. Finke

Public Domain

Walter Goehr

Courtesy of the Goehr family

Paul Hindemith

With kind permission from the Hindemith Foundation

Walter Niemann

© Dipl.-Ing. Gerhard Helzel, Edition Romana Hamburg

Kurt Weill

Courtesy of the Kurt Weill Foundation

Stefan Wolpe

Courtesy of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin

‘My “coups de coeur” of this volume are Walter Niemann’s elegant Moderne Tanzsuite, and the two pieces from Marie Galante by Kurt Weill, with Youkali-Tango which I present for the first time in its original piano version.’ – Gottlieb Wallisch