Hannes Wader sings 'Die alten Lieder' – with Reinhard Mey and an archive find
The German songwriter releases 26 songs that have accompanied his life – from folk songs and the miners' 'Steigerlied' to the rediscovered original of 'Heute hier, morgen dort'.
Archive image · Photo: Richard Huber / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Hannes Wader released the album 'Die alten Lieder' ('The Old Songs') on Stockfisch Records on Friday. It brings together 26 songs plus spoken pieces – works that shaped the songwriter: songs he wishes he had written himself, songs from his childhood and personal memories. Between the pieces, Wader explains in spoken introductions what connects him to each song.
They include the folk song 'Vor meinem Vaterhaus steht eine Linde', his father's favourite, 'Jenseits des Tales', a version of the miners' 'Steigerlied' as a nod to his family's mining roots, and 'Sommermärchen', a 1912 text by his grandmother that Wader set to music. He sings 'Zwei Musketiere' as a duet with Reinhard Mey and recites Mascha Kaléko's poem 'Memento'.
As archive finds, the album includes the rediscovered original version of 'Heute hier, morgen dort' from 1971 and 'Kaffee schwarz, Zigarette' from 1980. His website says such looks back at one's own life 'can sometimes be agonising'.