Description: "By gathering historical and musical fragments from a Europe torn apart by World War II and the Cold War, East German playwright Heiner Mèuller and West German composer Heiner Goebbels created Wolokolamsker Chaussee as a musical panorama that stretched across modern European history at a moment of international crisis. The question at the heart of the recording was prescient in the waning years of the Cold War, but it remains no less critical for the "crisis of Europe" today: Is it possible for Europe to be unified? A vast range of musical styles-from folk song to hip-hop, from the symphonic canon to heavy metal-coalesce in the five acts, which expose the wounds of European history while struggling musically to heal them. This extraordinary recording from 1988 not only captures the sound of a historical moment, but also powerfully enacts responses to it"--
Brief description: Philip V. Bohlman is Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, USA and Artistic Director of the cabaret ensemble, New Budapest Orpheum Society. He is the author of many books including Wolokolamsker Chaussee (2021) part of Bloomsbury's 33 1/3 Europe series. He is the 2022 International Balzan Prize Laureate in Ethnomusicology.