Christina Andersson sjunger Bulat Okudzjava och Bertolt Brecht

The writer and dramatist Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) is well-known to the Swedish audience, and many of his songs have become classics, put to music by Kurt Weill and later on by Hanns Eisler. Christina Andersson has herself played Polly in The Threepenny Opera, and on this records she sings Pirate Jenny.

Bulat Okudzhava (1924-1997) is relatively unknown in Sweden, but was a great figure in his native Soviet Union and eventually the entire Eastern Europe as well. When he started putting his poems to music he quickly became popular and the songs spread via unofficial routes long before he was allowed to perform publicly and could release record in the homeland. Formally, the songs of Brecht and Okudzhava are quite disparate, yet have much in common: the colloquial style, universal validity, incorruptibility, and social pathos.

Okudzhava died at the age of 73 during a visit in Paris in 1997. In his songs, he became an important expounder of the views of his generation, without ever being overtly patriotic, something which Staffan Skott pointed out in his obituary in Dagens Nyheter. It’s the helplessness and plight of the ordinary people he poetizes. Christina Andersson still performs his songs, both in Sweden and Russia.

Recorded in Europafilm’s Studio 3, May 1978.
Producer: Gunilla Sandberg Saulesco
Editor: Suzanne Öhman-Sundén
Cover photo: Jan de Laval

Musicians:
Guitar: Cecilia Peijel
Clarinet, saxophone: Jan Kling
Flute: Karin Öhman
Trumpet: Björn Borg
Percussion: Ulf Söderholm
Violin: Anders Lindgren
Viola: Björn Eriksson
Cello: Håkan Molander
Contrabass: Per Johansson
Banjo, guitar, mandolin: John Kongshaug
Piano, harmonium: Jean Billgren