“These texts must not be lost”: Erwin Steinhauer’s passion for Viennese – DiePresse.com

Erwin Steinhaueractor and cabaret artist, has been cultivating it for decades, regardless of the zeitgeist. In 1978 he sang the “Urasser Bossa Nova” and later recorded the album “Der g’schupfte Ferdl rides again”. “That was my collaboration with him Gerhard Bronnerwho actually discovered me. His boy, David, wrote the arrangements,” Steinhauer fondly remembers the two of them.

It sounded pretty funky back then. And he also dared to attempt the legendary monologue “Herr Karl”. And was dared to do so. Burgtheater director Claus Peymann contacted Helmut at the time Qualtinger personal. At most he wanted to get involved in a reading, which wasn’t enough for Peymann. And so Erwin Steinhauer played this star role in the Vienna Academy Theater in 1986. And it does so excellently with its very own timbre. “I believed for a long time that Peymann hired me for this. But the publisherschulenburg later told me that Qualtinger suggested me to Peymann. That touched me very much.”

Steinhauer probably sat a few tables away from Qualtinger in the Alt-Wien Café a few times, “but I never spoke to him.” Nevertheless: “The Qualtinger, the Artmann and the Leopoldi, that was my bubble early on.” However, so many years later, he can no longer rattle off the four Heurigen personalities that Mr. Karl praises in it. He has memorized the Woitschkerl Buam and the Pezner Masl, but the Network Pepi and Kornischnek Wickerl have swirled away in the orcus of amnesia. Doesn’t matter.

Now the stone carver, who was born in 1951, was given a special honor. On Thursday evening he was awarded the Hermann Leopoldi Honorary Prize in the Viennese folk song work by Ronald Leopoldi, the only son of the great Hermann Leopoldi. He can explain it, after all, he has been singing Leopoldi programs for fifteen years. Leopoldi Jr. recently brought him a rare text. “I sang it for the first time at a festival organized by the Jewish sports club Hakoah on Vienna-Platz. The song is called “Come with me, my darling, to the football field.” “We have reworked it,” says Steinhauer.

By “we” he means the musicians from Klezmer Reloaded. “We don’t play the repertoire as the piano humorist Hermann Leopoldi himself played it, but we, clarinetist Maciej Golebiowski and accordionist Alexander Shevchenko, made klezmer out of it. It fits so wonderfully musically and yet we remain faithful to the songs.” Postscript: “These texts must not be lost. We must bring them to a younger generation.”

What makes Hermann Leopoldi’s art timeless, apart from the musical verve? “They are incredible lyrics. Something like ‘I am an incorrigible optimist’, where someone who is feeling incredibly bad sings in the chorus that he is an optimist, but is already crying. That is a wonderful attitude to life that probably doesn’t exist anymore.”

One of Steinhauer’s programs is called “I am an average Viennese”. How come? “Simply because it’s a wonderful song,” says Steinhauer. “I tried to choose titles that would also mean something to young people. I was also fascinated by the fact that Leopoldi used around 70 lyricists over the course of his career. He first tried out new texts in the coffee house before finishing the songs.”

Steinhauer listened to Leopoldi’s songs as a child. He even suspects that his grandmother had contact with Helly Möslein. “I grew up with these things. Not just with “Schnucki, oh Schnucki” and the “Ringelspiel”, but with many of his songs. Ronald gave me these two volumes of the complete edition.” He loves browsing through it. Is there anything comparable today? “For me, Vienneseness of this depth represents what Ernstl Molden, who I admire incredibly, does. I mostly listen to his songs on long car journeys. Not least because his lyrics appeal to me so much.”