Will There Still Be Singing?

The Leo Baeck Institute and the American Society for Jewish Music invite you for a night of live music. This event is part of Carnegie Hall's 2023-2024 season's series: Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice.

Soprano Karyn Levitt performs Eric Bentley’s English versions of the songs of Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht, one of the 20th century’s great songwriting teams. Levitt’s close working relationship with Bentley, the foremost translator of Brecht’s lyrics and plays, gave her the opportunity of a lifetime to consult with the source of these acclaimed translations.

Karyn Levitt, Soprano

The Hanns Eisler Trio

Eric Ostling, Musical Director and Piano

Michael Unger, Director

Please note this event is in person.

Discover Austro-German composer Hanns Eisler whose music was branded by the Nazis as “degenerate.” Eisler was a student of Schoenberg, a contemporary of Kurt Weill, and Brecht’s favorite collaborator. Karyn Levitt is the performer of the English Eisler/Brecht repertoire of our time. Her close working relationship with her mentor, Brecht translator and friend Eric Bentley, gives her the opportunity to consult with a contemporary witness and the source of the acclaimed translations to excite the next generation with Hanns Eisler’s music and Bertolt Brecht’s lyrics. Hanns Eisler songs and music with words from Bertolt Brecht, in English adaptation by Eric Bentley, performed by Soprano Karyn Levitt and Music Director/Pianist Eric Ostling (optionally leading the Hanns Eisler Trio, featuring William Schimmel on accordion and Ira Siegel on guitar).

As a distinguished artist/producer, Ms. Levitt is known for her historic collaboration with Eric Bentley — whose centennial tribute (hosted by Michael Riedel and featuring Tony Kushner, Austin Pendleton, James Shapiro, Harold Bloom, and other literary and theater luminaries) she produced at The Town Hall and whose work she also recorded on her CD, Eric Bentley’s Brecht-Eisler Song Book.