Weills Weg (Kurt Weill 1900-1950)

[Karl Henning]

The final disc of the superb Herreweghe Harmonia Mundi box shares a cracking Pierrot lunaire with an extraordinary work by Weill: Das Berliner Requiem.


" In collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, Weill selected several of Brecht's preexisting poems in order to craft what he termed a "secular requiem that gives voice to contemporary Man's feelings about death." All of the texts used in the Berlin Requiem deal specifically with forgotten dead; faceless war casualties, or victims of violent crime whose bodies are disposed of in an undetected location. The work is economically scored for three-voice male chorus, wind band, guitar, banjo, and organ. Often the accompaniment texture is extremely spare, with much of the "Ballade vom ertrunkenen Mädchen" supported by guitar alone."

[San Antone]

Kurt Weill is on my Top Ten Composers list.  Happy to see a thread devoted to his work.

The Berlin Requiem is excellent - but I am mainly familiar with his stage works.  However, I recently listened to it, although I do not recall the specific recording.  It was the Herreweghe recording,

[Karl Henning]

I need to dig into the stage works.

[TheGSMoeller]

The final disc of the superb Herreweghe Harmonia Mundi box shares a cracking Pierrot lunaire with an extraordinary work by Weill: Das Berliner Requiem.

Great thread!
Weill and Brecht made a great pair. I've always really loved their collaboration on The Seven Deadly Sins (Die sieben Todsünden).


*And those are great performances from Herreweghe and The Gang.

[Karl Henning]

Cheers, Greg!

[San Antone]

Great thread!
Weill and Brecht made a great pair. I've always really loved their collaboration on The Seven Deadly Sins (Die sieben Todsünden).


*And those are great performances from Herreweghe and The Gang.

The Seven Deadly Sins (Die sieben Todsünden) is excellent!  I like this recording:

[JBS]

I had this on LP way back when
[asin]B0000268VJ[/asin]

That's the German language version, which I am fairly sure is the one I had.  There's apparently an English language version (to go by the Amazon tracklist) with the same cover art, but Amazon has it at a much cheaper price. The link for that is:
[asin]B0000026HI[/asin]

[Jo498]

I thought we already had a thread dedicated to Weill?

Berliner Requiem and 7 Todsünden are very successful on disc because they are not really stageworks (although the latter can be staged). I think there are several difficulties with the interpretation of Weill. Firstly, most are stage works that do not work so well on discs and might also be difficult to put successful on stage nowadays. Because there enters the second difficulty that especially in German speaking countries the perception is of Brecht first and Weill second, i.e. the composer and his music take a back seat. This is not only due to the prominence of Brecht, but some of the music is closely connected with text/stage action and was meant for singing actors. Problem is that some of it is too difficult to sing for most actors or at least they don't sing it too well nowadays. No comes the next problem that the reception/revival in the late 50s after the composer's death with the abovementioned recordings with his widow exhibit a peculiar style that was adapted to the aging Lenya's "diseuse" style. E.g. transposed down, tobacco and booze voice style, exaggerated antics etc. This is an option, but it should not be the main or only option. Because the historical recordings from ca. 1930 show a rather different, very "cool" style of interpretation that seems far preferable to me.

I's highly recommend the (slightly) abridged 1930 Three penny Opera with almost the premiere cast or in any case very close to the premiere. The sound on the Teldec issue is pretty good for its age.
Of the 60s "Brecht-centered" style, I find the 7 deadly sins + songs with Gisela May (Berlin Classics, I think) more successful than Lenya

tbc

[Symphonic Addict]

I'm very fond of his symphonies and string quartets. I'm not familiar with any other of his stuff yet.

[Sergeant Rock]

The final disc of the superb Herreweghe Harmonia Mundi box shares a cracking Pierrot lunaire with an extraordinary work by Weill: Das Berliner Requiem.

I have it with Atherton conducting The London Sinfonietta. I really like it, especially the third and fourth movements.

Sarge

[Jo498]

The London Sinfonietta/Atherton recordings collected on a DG double are in some respects extremely good and overall recommendable. Very good sound and playing, the purely orchestral pieces (violin concerto, threepenny opera suite) are about as good as it gets. Unfortunately, most of the vocal music is marred by non-idiomatic, non-native singers. (It's kind of the opposite of the rough and ready Lenya recordings). I have a recording of the symphonies (Bertini (EMI), again a twofer with a less desirable Weill on Broadway anthology) but I admittedly don't know the music well (I don't think I have heard the quartets but a cello sonata). All the instrumental works are very early written when Weill was a student of about 20 or so. They certainly show that he could have equally well become an expressionist or neoclassical composer of mainly instrumental music.

The most ambitious German stage work is "Rise and decline of the City of Mahagonny" (not to be confused with the short "Mahagonny songspiel". Not sure if there is a really convincing recording but the late 1950s with Lenya is probably overall the best. There is also one in Capriccio's extensive Weill series (with Silja, I think) that is serviceable. That series has quite a bit of stuff that gets hardly ever recorded (I have not heard most of it) and it was eventually re-packaged in two boxes.

I didn't like the two anthologies with Teresa Stratas although they seem to be highly regarded and she supposedly got the blessing of the old Lenya (Stratas' German diction is horrible). Whereas the 7 sins and fillers with Von Otter are not too bad, she is oscillating between her "normal" classical opera mode and what she apparently takes as a musical style and it is not always convincing but overall I like it and it deserves a chance. There are lots of song anthologies, it is probably best to try a few because tastes differ a lot here (I tried to describe some of the problems further above.)

Neither did I like very much the two Broadway musicals I heard. "Lady in the dark" (original cast on Sony/CBS Masterworks Heritage) has a few great songs but the whole did not interest me sufficiently (it also has a very 1940s Freudian plot that hasn't aged too well) and "Firebrand of Florence" (about Cellini) seemed just silly to me.

[JBS]

Mahagonny seems better represented on DVD than on CD. Amazon US only lists the Lenya recording, not the Capriccio on CD.  For DVD there's one from Teatro Real Madrid and one from Vienna with Gwyneth Jones and Jerry Hadley that are currently available, one from Salzburg 1998 with Jones and Hadley but different orchestral force, conductor, and director that's hugely overpriced, and two that are listed but not actually available: from the Met conducted by James Levine with Stratas, and from LA Opera with Patti LuPone directed by James Conlon.  I remember seeing the Met production on TV.

The Madrid DVD is the only one that can be considered recent
[asin]B005FMQBEM[/asin]

[Jo498]

The Capriccio is findable with some effort. As said, I am not recommending it with enthusiam but it is worth trying for a more modern, complete version in German.

ASIN: B001UUN948
[asin]B001UUN948[/asin]

ASIN:B00WUFBR0K
[asin]B00WUFBR0K[/asin]

Although I personally hardly watch opera DVDs I can imagine that some of these productions are good and more convincing than most recordings. I am admittedly also wary of English translations. Not mainly because of the language but more generally Weill and Brecht created something fairly special with Three Penny Opera and Mahagonny that is rather different from Broadway (despite Weill working for Broadway only about 10 years later) and should not be assimilated to that style.

(Above I wrongly wrote that all of the instrumental music is very early; that's not quite true, the violin concerto is from the mid-20s and the 2nd symphony from the 1930s.)

[ritter]

The Madrid DVD is the only one that can be considered recent
[asin]B005FMQBEM[/asin]

I saw that production live. I'm not really a fan of Weill (or of Brecht, for that matter), but the staging anyway didn't help me raise my appreciation of Mahagonny. The La Fura dels Baus team may have had a fresh approach to the art of the theatre when it first started some 40 years ago--not that I really ever admired them--, but now I find all the productions of them I've seen cliché-ridden and formulaic (the "environmentally aware" stage full of litter, the purposeful ugliness and aggressivemess, the dim lighting, the acrobatics--used the same for Mahagonny, The Flying Dutchman, or whatever). Pablo Heras-Casado did do a good job with the orchestra IIRC (well, to the extent that the work's pauvreté permits).

[JBS]

The Capriccio is findable with some effort. As said, I am not recommending it with enthusiam but it is worth trying for a more modern, complete version in German.

ASIN: B001UUN948
[asin]B001UUN948[/asin]

ASIN:B00WUFBR0K
[asin]B00WUFBR0K[/asin]

Although I personally hardly watch opera DVDs I can imagine that some of these productions are good and more convincing than most recordings. I am admittedly also wary of English translations. Not mainly because of the language but more generally Weill and Brecht created something fairly special with Three Penny Opera and Mahagonny that is rather different from Broadway (despite Weill working for Broadway only about 10 years later) and should not be assimilated to that style.

(Above I wrongly wrote that all of the instrumental music is very early; that's not quite true, the violin concerto is from the mid-20s and the 2nd symphony from the 1930s.)

Thank you. But the credit on the original to Bert Brecht!?

[Karl Henning]

Hah!

[Jo498]

Brecht was born "Berthold", but later used mostly the spelling "Bertolt" and was often also known by the shortened "Bert". (This can hardly come as a surprise to Americans who use nicknames without asking permission.)

I listened to the symphonies and the violin concerto last night and I think that the concerto is deservedly the best known piece of them. The 2nd symphony is closest to the style we know from Weills late 20s/early 30s vocal works (the booklet mentions the 7 deadly sins as especially close). The first symphony was probably inspired by Schoenberg's 1st, chamber symphony, but a much simpler and rougher piece (and apparently Busoni was not happy with it and harshly critized his student).

[asin]B006660TMG[/asin]

[ritter]

I don't know if this long lost and rediscovered Brecht / Weill masterpiece has been posted here before  :

https://www.youtube.com/v/jlvo8e-DnO4

Here is is in another concert (it starts at 4'32", but the Fauré mélodie at the beginning is also fantastic, as is the Britten folk song setting):

https://www.youtube.com/v/ujei43f2qkU