It is difficult to imagine a cause less fashionable than that of Hanns Eisler (1898-1962), the Schoenberg pupil who struggled with the problem of accessibility all his life. A socialist victim of America’s McCarthyite purges, his disillusioning experiences behind the Iron Curtain were balanced by an expectation that with the dismantling of the Stalin cult could come brighter times and a future without fear. He finally completed the reflective string-accompanied Ernste Gesänge (‘Serious Songs’) only weeks before his death in the old GDR. Here he namechecks the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and sets ‘approved’ contemporaries alongside lines by Friedrich Hölderlin yet there’s none of the inflated posturing associated with official art. Any affirmation is distinctly provisional, made more so by Matthias Goerne’s distinctive sonority and minutely inflected response. The songs can take a heftier accompaniment than that provided by Ensemble Resonanz, sharply expressive as it is.

In the tumultuous environment of inter-war Europe, the appropriateness of different forms of artistic expression was hotly contested. Now it seems anything goes. The present programme offers a final jump-cut from the composer’s initial opus, the atonal Piano Sonata he dedicated to his teacher in 1923, to a trio of popular, frankly propagandist numbers taken from a stage work and a film score. Of these perhaps only the ‘Solidaritätslied’ from Kuhle Wampe, once ubiquitous in street protests and public meetings, has the sheer memorability of Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht’s other preferred collaborator. It is novel and rather wonderful to hear it sung with Goerne’s perfect diction and sound.

Goerne’s heartfelt contribution is plainly central to this project and an associated concert tour. At its heart is a sequence of 14 succinct and dramatically varied songs with piano, most to texts by Brecht and most overlapping with the singer’s Gramophone Award-winning recording of Eisler’s ‘Hollywood Songbook’ (Decca, 1/99 – now officially download only). Goerne also sang in Lothar Zagrosek’s more elusive account of the Deutsche Sinfonie (Decca, 12/95 – nla). Those issues were jewels in the crown of Decca’s ‘Entartete Musik’ series but Harmonia Mundi’s package, not to be outdone, is surprisingly opulent, with full texts and translations. The baritone enjoys a close artistic collaboration with composer-pianist Thomas Larcher and the sonic quality is first-rate.

For good or ill it all seems a long way from the preoccupations of our own time. Eisler’s ‘classical’ side is strikingly well served.