Germany’s Picture of Kurt Weill in 2000

Kur t Weill Newsletter Volume 14, Number 1 2 5Kur t Weill Newsletter Volume 18, Numbers 1-2 2 5

Germany’s Picture of Kurt Weill in 2000

by Jürgen Schebera

These remarks are excerpted from a speech given by the author at thepresentation ceremony of Germany’s Kurt Weill commemorative postagestamp in Dessau, 17 February 2000. Presenting the stamp were BarbaraHendricks, Parlamentarische Staatssekretärin beim Bundesminister derFinanzen, and Wolfgang Gerhards, Finanzminister des LandesSachsen-Anhalt.

The last five years have witnessed the one-hundredth birthdays of asignificant number of artists and scientists who helped create thenow-famous cultural life of the Weimar Republic. Only few peopleare honored each year with a jubilee postage stamp, so the selectionprocess is undoubtedly a difficult one. Admirers of Kurt Weill wel-come the unveiling of this stamp with great joy because of thehonor that it bestows. But, after seeing the stamp, students ofWeill’s music must feel a twinge of sorrow amidst the general ela-tion.

If we survey the jubilee issues over the past several years, we findthat all of them feature an expressive portrait of the person’s face,often with the honoree’s signature used as an additional design ele-ment. The image evokes a sense of honor, dignity, and pride. Butfor Weill’s stamp the picture chosen for the design is a publicityphotograph taken in September 1943 during the final rehearsalperiod for One Touch of Venus. The composer is at the piano sur-

rounded by the principal cast members; Mary Martin’s photogeniclegs dangle above Weill’s hands on the piano keyboard. On closeinspection, one can see him looking sideways, somewhat embar-rassed. Weill’s persona is reduced to a mere cutout overshadowedby two sexy female legs, as if to say, “That’s Broadway Glamor!”

This stamp firmly reinforces in the minds of today’s generalpublic the postwar German myth that Weill sold out to Broadway, amyth that at the same time allows us to dismiss irrationally his legit-imate claim on Berlin. The myth says that Weill made a lot of moneyin America by writing cheap songs, and it has resulted in the avoid-ance of Weill’s American music by German theaters and theGerman academic establishment. This myth, like many others, isbased on ignorance.

Why do we continue to embrace this myth when it is now wellknown that Weill’s forced emigration to America was far from pain-less? Why do we fault him for writing for Broadway when that wasthe only medium available in the United States to a theater com-poser? Why do we refuse to acknowledge the difficulty of writing asuccessful work for the commercial theater, or ignore Weill’s bril-liance as an orchestrator, or decline to study the important contri-butions he made to the development of the American musical the-ater (which continues to influence current developments inEurope)?

I ask this distinguished gathering to contemplate these ques-tions. We must also encourage future stamp designers and selectorsto examine more closely the artistic and historical contexts of thehonorees. Anyone who saw the recent Houston Grand Opera pro-duction of Street Scene in Berlin at the Theater des Westens has thebeginning of an impression of what Weill was able to achieve inAmerica. But Germans are still eons away from understanding theAmerican Weill. What keeps holding us back?

Germany’s commemorative postage stamp of Weill

(above), designed by Fritz Haase and Sibylle Haase, is

taken from this rehearsal photo from One Touch of Venus,

1943. Pictured left-to-right are Mary Martin, John Boles,

Paula Laurence, Kurt Weill, and Kenny Baker.Reproduced below is a selection of the designs not chosen for the stamp.

2 6 Volume 14, Number 1 Kur t Weill Newsletter2 6 Volume 18, Numbers 1-2 Kur t Weill Newsletter

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Herman Wouk, authorWhile my second novel was still in the works, I heard from Kurt Weill. He proposed to do an

Aurora Dawn musical, with me as librettist! What a leap to the moon, from the Columbia VarsityShow to collaboration with Kurt Weill! Once a week I came into Manhattan to talk over the idea withhim, and we soon had a solid scenario blocked out. The question arose, should we proceed then andthere to write it? Kurt Weill was free and willing, but I told him I wanted to finish a new novel aboutmy boyhood, a matter of months, and I would be ready to go. He cheerfully acquiesced, and turnedmeantime to writing a musical with Alan Jay Lerner.

For two years after that Kurt Weill and I stayed in touch, but our schedules did not quite mesh.Shortly after Lost in the Stars opened I heard from him again. “Well, are we going to do Aurora Dawnnow?” he inquired, the same old genial, businesslike Kurt. I was game, and we made a date to meetin Manhattan. A few days after his call, I opened The New York Times and read that Kurt Weill hadsuddenly died at fifty.

Talk about your lost opportunities. But a Broadway hit with Kurt Weill, so early in my career,might well have swept me past a creative point of no return. Such is my true feeling about this long-ago episode, and I have no real regrets.

Yet ah, Aurora Dawn with a score by Kurt Weill! That pious ex-seminarian, Joseph Stalin, oncesaid to Winston Churchill, “The past is with God,” and in another context Churchill himself wrote,“The terrible ifs accumulate.” I am left with affectionate memories of Kurt Weill, and no musicalAurora Dawn. Not yet.

Bebe Neuwirth, actorWeill’s music has always resonated deeply and personally for me. I perceive it as both raw and ele-

gant simultaneously. Singing it or dancing it, I feel connected in a spiritual way—that I’ve known themusic for longer than I’ve been alive.

Ned Rorem, composer and authorIn art the question of influence, or indeed of liberal uncredited helping oneself to the ingredients

of others (plagiarism), is endlessly engrossing and endlessly irrelevant. Stature has little to do withoriginality. What an artist steals, if he is an artist, melts—during the very act of being stolen—intoa new shape, as though in conspiracy with, but really despite, the artist. For instance, the form andtune and key of Ibert’s “Little White Donkey” owe everything to Debussy’s “Girl with the FlaxenHair,” yet each piece’s effect is independent of the other. In the penultimate “motionless” movementof his two-hour War Requiem of 1961, how much does Britten owe to Weill’s twenty-minute BerlinRequiem of three decades earlier, with those unmetered phrases for the Unknown Soldier’s soliloquy,like Weill’s long solo over a Hammond organ? Wilfred Owen’s compassion and Bertolt Brecht’s bit-terness seem to join in their composers’ nearly unbearable inspirations.

What is Weill’s uniqueness, his value? His uniqueness is the gift to write whole operas that arereal operas but woven as garlands, operas that rise and fall and rise again, are of a piece yet mantledlike song cycles in which any small part is nonetheless extractable and self-contained. His value is inbeing better than others at the same game, a game worth playing.

[Excerpted and reprinted with Mr. Rorem’s permission from Settling the Score: Essays on Music (New York:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988): 178-79, 182. The essay, “Notes on Weill,” originally appeared in Opera News (21January 1984).]

For this special centenary issue we asked a number of prominent people in music, theater,and literature to share candid comments about their personal relationship to Weill’s musicor their thoughts about the nature of Weill’s contribution to twentieth-century culture.Here are their responses.

Kur t Weill Newsletter Volume 18, Numbers 1-2 2 7

Eighteen Ways of Looking at Kurt Weill

Harold Prince, director and producerIn my opinion, “My Ship” and “Speak Low” are among the loveliest American theater songs writ-

ten. Weill’s contribution to the American musical theater was potent and unique. Bringing his mit-tel-European origins—the sounds of an era riddled with politics and decadence—to an America thatwas fervently naive and optimistic, his music, in collaboration with his American partners, created ahybrid voice—more cynical, melancholy, wistful. Before Weill, immigrant European composers drewon their operetta backgrounds or, burying their Europeanness, appropriated the American dynamic,the edgy, rhythmic New York sound. Weill’s American scores merged both influences and illustratedthe journey so many people took at the time.

In answer to the question you didn’t ask: I do not believe that the best of Weill was European. Ithink his career constantly evolved.

Thomas Hampson, singerIn addition to the overwhelming sensuality of Weill’s music—and by that I mean its three-dimen-

sional beauty, drama, poignance and much in between as well—I am always aware of a great musicalsoul perpetually concerned that we “get it,” that we understand what it means to be human. Andmore to the point, that we be human—to, and for, and with one another. Like Busoni and Mahlerbefore him, Weill was ahead of his time. But isn’t that what great artists are for?

HK Gruber, composer and conductorThis year I had the opportunity to do some interesting Weill programming: I would often place a

“throw-away” song like “Berlin im Licht” right next to a complex piece like the Second Symphony.In so doing I could show without any lecturing that a little song by Weill had as much weight as a com-plete symphony. This standard of excellence can be found throughout Weill’s work, and I use it as ayardstick to which I as an artist must measure up.

Michael Kunze, author, playwright, and translatorKurt Weill’s music has a very special meaning for me, because my mother loved to sing his songs.

She was an actress and chanteuse, and admired Lenya. Already as a kid, I knew Lenya’s records byheart. I also could sing along with the whole Threepenny Opera.

It took half a lifetime though, before I got to know the “American” Weill who some people thinkis so different from the Threepenny Opera Weill. I don’t feel that. Weill is always true to himself, nomatter what genre or style he works in. After four bars you know for certain that this is somethingWeill has written.

He was one of those rare musical geniuses who are too smart to categorize music. Like Mozart hewanted to be popular and serious simultaneously, and like him he was successful in that. Some artistsare simply too great to be pigeonholed by the professors of this petty world.

I always loved Weill’s music. Now that I’ve read his letters and other intimate documents I can’thelp loving the man. He’s the kind of composer and human being lyricists and librettists search for.Sometimes I wish he could have been reborn right after his death. He would be about my age now,and I’d try everything to work with him. Well, I know it can’t be. Why then do I keep searching?

Julius Rudel, conductorKurt Weill’s music proves that there still can be originality in the supposedly used-up idioms of

the past.

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Michael Feinstein, singer and pianistEver since I was a teen I have been enthralled by the music of Kurt Weill. My momentous introduction

to his work came, perhaps inevitably, from the 1958 Lenya recording of The Threepenny Opera. My youth-ful bones were galvanized by its exotic, undulating rhythms and unearthly harmonies, the likes of which Ihad never before experienced. As I learned more about Weill and his life and times, a new world of musicemerged for a shy, young kid growing up in Ohio who was reared largely on Lawrence Welk, barbershopquartets, and community choruses. Weill was my key to musical expansion and sophistication.

It is not possible for me analyze his work because I am so partisan towards it, and, frankly, find criticaldissection of a work often boring and self-serving. The stylistic variety of his output fascinates me. As ayoungster I was propelled by the muscularity and raw dissonant energy of the early German works as Iscrambled to find every possible recording and score available; sometimes paying high prices for obscuri-ties. Shortly after my recording career commenced, I sang three very early unknown Weill songs with newEnglish lyrics by Marshall Barer for an album called “Over There.” While I was pleased with the achieve-ment most critics were not, putting the performances and me in a neither fish nor fowl category.

The sharp divisions between concert, theater, and pop music that made it once impossible to programa Gershwin piece on anything but a pops concert (and the attendant mentality surrounding such divisions)are largely defunct, and that is good for Weill because he is largely beyond category. It is easy, of course inbroad strokes to divide the work into German and American periods. Many feel that his later work was moremelodic due to the requirements of American musical theater, but it also seems to me to be a natural evo-lution of maturity and economy of expression. These thoughts were very much on my mind when in Julyof 1977 I met one of Weill’s major collaborators: Ira Gershwin.

Ira had a very warm relationship with Weill and Lenya and spoke of them fondly. He and Kurt wrotetwo Broadway shows [Lady in the Dark (1941) and The Firebrand of Florence (1945)] as well as one film score[Where Do We Go From Here? (1945)]. Ira, perhaps naturally, considered his most successful work with Kurtto be his most important—Lady In The Dark. He dismissed Firebrand as a work doomed from the start. Irawas never able to explain successfully to me why he agreed to write lyrics for it except to say that he wasintimidated into it, being so painfully shy that he didn’t want to say no to Kurt and hurt his feelings. Thosewho knew Ira well would be able to find this explanation plausible, but there must be more to the story thatwe’ll never know. I read Ira an ancient review of Firebrand that blamed its failure on his lyrics, saying theywere too clever, and intrusively so. This prompted one of the only expressions of irritation I ever witnessedin our six-year relationship. He said there was so much wrong with the show: a poor idea for a musical, badstaging, and the participation of Lotte Lenya. “Lenya?” I asked. “Of course,” he replied. “She was sup-posed to portray the most beautiful woman in the world.” Then he let a long silence linger so I could allowthe absurdity of the idea to soak in. Even though it should probably never be revived, recent recordings ofexcerpts as well as the marvelous still unreleased 1945 discs sung by Dorothy Kirsten and Thomas L.Thomas prove that the score is worthy of attention. “There’ll Be Life, Love, and Laughter” and “A RhymeFor Angela” are particular favorites of mine.

Another collaboration, Where Do We Go From Here?, produced the mock operetta “The Nina, Pinta andSanta Maria” of which Ira was justly proud. One day when Ira’s old friend Vincente Minnelli paid him avisit, Ira uncharacteristically asked me to play the old 78 rpm demo recording he and Kurt had made of thesequence and beamed like a proud father as we listened.

But it was Lady In The Dark that made Ira the proudest, and justifiably so. Though its original impactcannot possibly be recreated, it remains a richly resonant work brimming with wonderful wit in both themusic and the lyrics. Yet this first collaboration between the team was very hard for Ira because Kurt likedto set music to words and Ira liked to work with a good tune first. Their continued collaboration proves thatthey overcame the problem, but this was due to Ira giving in and writing all the words first. He told me thathe wrote the words to contrived dummy tunes and gave the completed lyric to Kurt with a suggestion fortempo and rhythmic scan. In one instance, Ira said that “Girl Of The Moment” was actually his dummytune which Kurt liked and used. Ira was careful to stress that Kurt added harmony and made it a real song,yet he remained secretly tickled that the inspiration came from his rehearsal melody. It is important to stressthat Ira revealed this information in the strictest of confidence, and were he still alive, it would haveremained untold.

Ira considered Kurt’s lack of melodic inspiration a major flaw in his ability as a composer. He also dis-liked and found incomprehensible The Threepenny Opera and Kurt’s other German works. When I told Irahow much I loved that period of Weill’s output he simply couldn’t understand it. I told him I felt it was bril-liant and significant work and he replied that as talented as Kurt was, he was nowhere near as talented ashis brother, George. George, he said, was a genius, not Kurt. As I muse about our conversation almost twen-ty-five years later in this rich year of Weill centennary celebrations, I can only repeat what I stated at thetime: Sorry, Ira, but I don’t agree.




Steve Reich, composerThe most useful model [for beginning a new kind of opera or music theater] for me turns out to

be Kurt Weill. What I learned from him is that if you’re going to write a piece of music theater thereare two basic questions you are obliged to ask yourself: what (and where) is the orchestra, and what isthe vocal style?

Weill, as a student of Busoni and as a working composer, could have chosen a standard orchestrain the pit when he did The Threepenny Opera, but no, he chose a banjo, saxophone, trap drums—acabaret ensemble. As to vocal style, again, given his background, it would have been natural to assumethat he wanted bel canto operatic voices. Again he said no and chose a woman with a rough cabaretvoice. The result is a masterpiece which completely captures its historical time. Not the time ofMozart or Verdi or Wagner—it captures the Weimar Republic—and the reason it does this is preciselybecause of his choice of orchestra and vocal style.

Kurt Weill was pointing the way to the future. Look at his musical context. Berg composedWozzeck in 1921 with a huge orchestra and large vocal style and one can certainly see his work as doneunder the shadow of the death of German romanticism. Weill was aware of that death as well, but hisreaction in 1928 is The Threepenny Opera. While Berg is looking backward Weill instead does anabout-face and looks to contemporary popular forms as material for music theater.

We are living at a time now when the worlds of concert music and popular music have resumedtheir dialogue. Perhaps I have had a hand in this restoration myself but certainly Kurt Weill began itlong before I was born. This dialogue is, of course, the normal way of the music world. It seems thatthe wall between serious and popular music was erected primarily by Schoenberg and his followers.Since the late 1960s this wall has gradually crumbled and we are more or less back to the normal sit-uation where concert musicians and popular musicians take a healthy interest in the what their coun-terparts have done and are doing. Kurt Weill pointed the way back in the 1920s.

[Excerpted and reprinted with Mr. Reich’s permission from “Kurt Weill, the Orchestra and Vocal Style fromInterviews with the late K. Robert Schwarz.” The chapter will appear in Writings on Music: 1965-2000, a collectionby Mr. Reich introduced and edited by Paul Hillier scheduled for publication in 2001 by Oxford University Press.]

Milva, singerI am flattered and proud that the Kurt Weill Newsletter has asked me, Milva, for my opinion about

the universally recognized musician Kurt Weill. When the great director Giorgio Strehler asked meto sing some Brecht-Weill songs for him, I was both frightened and enthusiastic. Up to then I hadsung only popular songs, and I was anxious to prove my singing capabilities in a difficult new reper-tory. Strehler recognized the “singer” Milva and gave me my premiere at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan.I played Jenny in The Threepenny Opera for three consecutive years. This new world enchanted me somuch that I almost gave up popular music entirely. I consider Kurt Weill one of the greatest musi-cians of the twentieth century. My connection to Weill has changed my musical life, my artistic life,and my life as a woman. I have just one more dream: to sing Weill in his adopted country, America.

Skitch Henderson, conductor and arrangerBecause my approach to Kurt Weill’s music has generally been from the podium, I have an almost

fanatical regard for the sound of his orchestrations, which have, to my knowledge, never been imitat-ed. I was reminded of this again recently, when I conducted a concert at Carnegie Hall with UteLemper. Very few composers come to mind that have the arranging and orchestration skills of Weill.His sound always clears my ears in some strange manner; even long after it has gone away, the mem-ories are haunting. Other arrangers of his music, including myself, somehow lose the warmth, theinner voices, the right endings—even if you are lucky enough to find musicians who can assimilatehis style. I’m so gratified to have had my time here in New York City overlap with his.


Eric Bentley, playwright, author, and translatorI have never been a music critic. I wrote on music, if at all, only when it was subsumed under the

heading Music Drama, which of course was where I encountered Kurt Weill. But I wasn’t his critic,I was his interpreter and perhaps, in the end, his collaborator. It all began with a collaborator of mine,the late Desmond Vesey, who had done the only good English translation of Die Dreigroschenoper thatwas (so far as I know) around in the thirties. Kurt Weill saw it and observed that the lyrics weren’tmuch good: they didn’t fit the music properly. If he mistakenly attributed those lyrics to me, that isunderstandable, as I had already been asked to “edit” the Vesey text, and I ended up (after Weill’sdeath) taking over the lyrics entirely—as evidenced in the edition of The Threepenny Opera still inprint with Grove Press, Lotte Lenya’s picture on the jacket. . . . Am still not ready to make a pro-nouncement for the Kurt Weill Newsletter on “What KW Has Meant to Me.” Am still working outthe answer by what has always been my method: when translating Brecht poetry, I sit at the piano andsing. Later perhaps I stand up and let others play the accompaniment with me singing to a crowd.Thank you, Kurt Weill!

John Mauceri, conductorWeill wanted to speak the language of the people. At the same time, his music has a kind of sad-

ness. This is just in the nature of the man, who was a tremendous humanist. Kurt Weill was one ofthe few composers who was both a genius and a wonderful man. And this is especially apparent in hismusic, which is both sad and hopeful that the world could be a better place.

One of the problems with modern musicals today is that they rarely do anything more than tell astory. The story isn’t more than the story. When I conducted The Eternal Road in New York thisyear—the first time it was heard there in sixty-three years—many young composers came to hear it.I had two conversations, one with Steve Flaherty, who composed Ragtime, and one with AlanMenken, who wrote Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Both werehearing this huge Biblical epic written in 1935 for the first time, and they wanted to talk about howamazing it was that Weill could write great, moving, huge pieces of music based on songs. Becausethe problem with a song is that it is only three minutes long. So how do you write something that laststhree hours based on things that are only three minutes long? That’s hard. Ask Paul McCartney, askElton John. That’s hard to do.

We need to keep performing Weill’s music so that new composers can hear it and start their writ-ing careers with the benefit of knowing something that is fifty or sixty years old. And that’s what Ihope will happen as Weill is performed more often.

Louis Andriessen, composerOne of the great things about Dutch culture is that we are constantly influenced by what is hap-

pening in surrounding countries. When I was asked to comment about Weill, my mind filled withmemories of my student years at the conservatory in The Hague, where Weill’s music was taught as aroutine part of our education.

The most meaningful link between me and Weill was the great singer Cathy Berberian; she had astrong influence on me as a composer and also greatly admired Weill’s music. In 1962 I went to Milanto study with Luciano Berio, who, of course, was then married to Berberian. I remember accompa-nying Cathy at the piano at several different performances of at least three Weill songs: “Le grandLustucru,” “Speak Low,” and very passionate readings of “Surabaya Johnny.”

Cathy had only two German composers in her repertory: Weill and Schoenberg. She had suchrespect for language, and such exacting standards of performance that included a very consciousawareness of the inherent sound of a text, that she refused to sing either Weill or Schoenberg inGerman, fearing that she would not do justice to the language. (She even did Pierrot Lunaire in theauthorized English version.) This rigid side of Cathy was very elegant and also very authentic. I thinkthat Cathy’s great respect for language rubbed off on me. I always try to make text sing authenticallyin the original language—sometimes many of them at once!




Anne Sofie von Otter, singerWhenever I sing or hear Kurt Weill’s music I am immediately taken in by his range of instru-

mental coloring and by his use of rhythm! Nobody has ever come close to writing the likes of hismusic; he has his own highly personal and original style—always the mark of a truly great artist.Moreover his music makes me happy and full of high-spirited energy. When I recorded the Weill CDfor Deutsche Grammophon with John Eliot Gardiner, I was in seventh heaven!

Kurt Weill’s music is clever and often full of humor, and, like the music of Leonard Bernstein, itspeaks to a wide range of listeners who may not otherwise be attracted to so-called classical music. Hismusic makes me tap my foot and it clears my brain—I love it!

Francesca Zambello, stage directorAt this point in my life, the stomach-curdling jitters that used to plague me every opening night

have given way to milder forms of hair-twisting, but the premiere of Lady in the Dark did make mewonder if I’d have to lie down on a couch for the next year. Weill’s 1941 show hadn’t ever been seenand heard in London, and the venue was the Royal National Theater, not a place where you want tofail. But that wasn’t exactly what gave me the shakes. Just as I was sitting down I saw a familiar hair-do sink nearly out of sight three rows down. She really came, I gasped to myself: Kitty Carlisle. Notonly had she been at Lady’s original opening (and later on, actually in it), but she’d been married toMoss Hart! What if she hates it? I knew that back in the forties, Lady had been done up in a fabu-lously big way, and here we had done the show on a budget with a few props including the invitingcouch on which the heroine, Liza Elliott, spends so much time wondering about her career. Hercareer. What about my career! We had also changed a bit of dialogue which had come off as too dense-ly dated, and that too gave me cause to worry. Anyway, there was a party afterwards and I saw herapproach, followed by a small retinue. She looked serious. Then she put on her glasses and said, “Itis you. Bravo.” Anyway, I gather she wasn’t just being polite, but really was happy to be there.

The only other Weill show I have done is Street Scene, which is absurdly undervalued in my esti-mation. When my Houston production traveled to, among other places, Berlin, I felt not anxiety buta kind of rage when we opened in the Theater des Westens. It was in 1995, just a few years after thewall disappeared, but while that event seemed in the distant past, I was hardly the only one whounderstood the significance of opening Street Scene in Berlin. Here we were in the city Weill loved somuch and which would have happily killed him fifty years ago.

William Bolcom, composerI regard Kurt Weill as a sort of spiritual brother; as with any family member, sometimes this has

caused no small annoyance when critics have accused me of being heavily influenced by him! NowI’m not bothered anymore by that, as I had to realize that we have so much in common as regards atti-tude and background.

Many young composers today have journeyed from popular music to classical pretensions; bothWeill and I came to popular music from classical roots. Either one of us could have been a “boutique”or academic composer if we’d chosen, and I think we didn’t stop there only partly because we want-ed to reach a wider audience: I think it’s mostly because there is nothing harder than writing a goodtune that communicates. (People always say, “Write a good popular song and your financial troubleswill be over.” If it were only that simple!) Weill wrote an awful lot of tunes (and much other music)in his short life, and not every one “works” or has become popular, but a respectable number of themhave, and there he beats me hands down.

I’m in awe of the greatest of the tunes mostly; the big works are something I can relate to moreeasily in the way another composer might. Many years ago, when I won my first Kurt WeillFoundation grant, Lotte Lenya asked me what impressed me most of all Weill’s work. I had to say“September Song.” In it he bridges two cultures totally successfully; that song reverberates as deeplyas anything ever written, and more as I get older. If an artist can do that even once in life, that’senough.

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Lessons in Paradox

by Seth Brodsky

I must reach the utmost degree of simplicity if I want to write for stu-dents and wish to be comprehensible to them. But despite all such sim-plicity, I must give my best and highest.—Kurt Weill, 1930.

I don’t think anybody really knew Kurt Weill. When he died, I lookedat him, and I wasn’t sure I really knew him.—Lotte Lenya, on KurtWeill, 1978.

How does a man “reach utmost simplicity” and yet conceal his ownidentity, even to a lover of twenty-six years? This may be only onelesson in paradox, but it’s a good one: How to be utterly simple andyet remain utterly mysterious. In this regard, Der Jasager, KurtWeill’s 1930 collaboration with Elisabeth Hauptmann and BertoltBrecht, might be the composer’s most mysteriously simple—andparadoxical—score. And that itself is a paradox, because DerJasager wasn’t engineered to hide its secrets; it was engineered tomake everything crystal clear. This slender little school opera, towhich Weill’s words above actually refer, is a work he and Brechtlabeled a Lehrstück or “learning play/teaching piece.” GearingJasager for performance in schools, by schoolchildren themselves,Weill aimed to make the work a tour de force of clarity.

Why this need for simplicity and clarity? Because Jasager wassupposed to instruct, not seduce. And for Weill it held many spe-cific lessons: it could be a political lesson, a composition lesson, alesson in integrity of expression, in operatic form or operatic pro-duction, or even a lesson in opera criticism. But it could not be les-son in paradox; you can’t quite “teach” that. “It is important aboveall to learn full understanding [Einverständnis]” are the first and lastwords Weill sets in Der Jasager. A “full understanding” is Jasager’slesson and its method, laid down in perhaps the sparest music Weillever wrote.

But the work has another story, an alternate history. The text ofDer Jasager is not really Brecht’s own, and it doesn’t come fromWeimar Germany but from medieval Japan. It’s actually a modifiedGerman translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of Arthur Waley’s1921 English translation of a nearly 600-year-old Noh play calledTaniko (“The Valley Rite”). Brecht deleted all religious references,framed it with those quasi-Marxist choruses about learning “fullunderstanding,” and Weill set it to music.

So Der Jasager is a palimpsest of sorts, written upon the fadedtraces of another work. This “borrowing” was a famous trait ofBrecht’s (and also, to certain extent, Weill’s), and in this lightJasager is not alone among Weill-Brecht collaborations. But shiftingthe light a little, Taniko becomes quite a different model for DerJasager than, say, The Beggar’s Opera was for Die Dreigroschenoper.For while Jasager’s creators attempted to eliminate all ambiguityand paradox, Jasager’s effaced model Taniko did the opposite.Taniko is an intentional knot of mystery born of Japanese Nohdrama, which founded itself on ambiguity and paradox. Brecht, a“father” of the Lehrstück, set its highest goal as instruction; ZeamiMotokiyo, a “father” of classical Noh drama, set Noh’s highest goal


as Yugen–a fusion of dimness, depth, and mystery. And while Weilldemanded of Jasager an extreme, simple clarity, Zeami would haveaspired in Taniko for “The Feeling that Transcends Cognition.” DerJasager, like any instruction manual or set of directions, sinks assoon as it “transcends cognition.” And yet its origin, its “sup-pressed subconscious,” is an art of ambiguity. Weill and Brechtthemselves experienced this irony firsthand: after initial perfor-mances, their tutorial on Marxist values was rejected as dictatorialby the German Left and celebrated (as dictatorial?) by the GermanRight. In a seemingly cynical solution, Brecht about-faced the text,and titled his revision Der Neinsager (“The No-Sayer”). Perhapsnot ambiguous, but certainly paradoxical.

As long as its origin continues to be suppressed, Der Jasager canbe understood, appreciated, even performed according to itsauthors’ assertions: opera as mechanism, as method. WitnessRichard Minnich’s recent production of Jasager at CaliforniaInstitute of the Arts and surrounding elementary schools. Minnichfervently claims Der Jasager as a “tremendously effective learningtool” and advises against “becoming obsessed with perfect techni-cal execution. [Der Jasager] is a forgiving opera, written to be per-formed by amateurs, not professionals.” Minnich gives us a prag-matic set of do’s and don’ts: education but not art, practicality butnot perfection, amateurs but not professionals.

But what happens when one chooses not to forget Der Jasager’srelationship to Taniko? A lot happens, because the ideals of Nohdrama reverse exactly those rules Minnich laid out for his Jasagerproduction. Zeami, in his nine extraordinary Noh treatises from theearly 1400s, consistently pleads for art rather than education; thepractical must always give way to perfection’s relentless pursuit,and no Noh actor can tolerate the least amateurism—Noh is a con-summately professional art. Essentially, all the ad hoc, external con-cerns of a “teaching piece” like Der Jasager must be thrown out thewindow.

Last April, Japan Society of America put Der Jasager up against itsancient ancestor Taniko, with fascinating results. Perhaps not sur-prisingly, things didn’t quite work: Taniko, ferociously played bythe professional Japanese Noh troupe Nohgaku-za, shocked itsyounger sibling almost into oblivion. It wasn’t that the two workswere all that different: both pieces came in concentrate-form,carved in the same hard stone with strikingly similar gestures—stark, obsessive, unblinking.

But Der Jasager’s austerity was still put to didactic use, whileTaniko’s bareness plunged it into vigorous mystery, beautiful andviolent. Der Jasager was still in school, but Taniko was in the the-ater, and if you’re given a choice, it’s hard to stay in school. Thedouble-bill was anything but a failure, though. It certainly took thewind out of Der Jasager as a Lehrstück, but it offered a tremendouspossibility for this small opera to be presented as a piece of artrather than a piece of instruction, one inspired by the Japanese tra-dition.

Kurt Weill’s ideals for simplicity are certainly applicable for aschool-produced Jasager. But we also have words from Weill aboutthe ideals of “theater opera.” They come from a 1935 letter toLenya, in which Weill excitedly describes a recent production ofThe Beggar’s Opera as “one of the most beautiful nights I’ve everhad in the theater, an incomparably more beautiful and moreaggressive production than Die Dreigroschenoper, and much betterperformed. Stylistically this was a theater of perfection such as I’vepreviously encountered only with the Japanese.” So Kurt Weill’s


only recorded feeling about Japanese theater are preserved in threehighly descriptive words: “beauty,” “aggression,” and “perfec-tion.”

As words go, these three are pretty substantial, and they speakless to Brecht than Zeami, less to “pedagogics” than paradoxes. Forinstance, Zeami frequently writes about the absolute necessity offusing beauty with aggression, brutality with elegance—and alwaysin the pursuit of a specialperfection, what he calledhana, or “flower.” The actormust at once convey “violentbody movement, gentle footmovement,” or else “violentfoot movement, gentle bodymovement.” The actor por-traying a warrior must conveyroughness and grace, like “aflower blooming on a rock.”The actor playing an old manmust infuse a late-life weak-ness and angst with brilliantcharm, like “a flower bloom-ing on a dead tree.”

Zeami’s paradoxes extendfarther into the realm of aes-thetic philosophy. “The art ofthe flower of profundity,” forexample, is a mountain, asymbol of height. But themountain is profound notbecause it is so high, but“rather because it is so deep.”“There are limits to heights,”Zeami specifies, “yet thedepths cannot be measured.”And thus a paradox: true pro-fundity is both limitless andimperceptible. Similarly, “theflower of peerless charm”reveals itself in the impossi-ble image, “in the dead ofnight, the sun shines brightly.” But perhaps Zeami’s culminatingparadox is his famous formula, “If hidden, acting shows the flower;if unhidden, it cannot.” The performer accomplishing this formu-la will achieve incredible force, though “the actor does nothing”and “nothing happens.”

This kind of intensity, with its invisible interiors and indissolu-ble paradoxes, does not tolerate a Lehrstück philosophy. But it doestolerate many scenes in Der Jasager, especially its penultimate num-ber. The scene involves a young student and his teacher on a dan-gerous mountain journey with other students; the boy has fallen illalong the way. The custom, as the teacher explains to the boy, giveshim a choice: either tell the group to abandon the journey and turnback, or allow the group to throw the boy to his death in the valleybelow and complete the journey unhindered. As the title implies,the boy says “Yes” to the custom—he has “learned full under-standing”—and he is hurled to his death.

The longest scene in Der Jasager, it is also Weill at his blankestand barest. The boy and teacher speak in slow, unaccompanied linesof only a few pitches; Weill occasionally interpolates fascinatinghalf-cadences on solo piano, painfully interior and hollow; at certain

key moments, the teacher declaims his lines at paralytic volume,reinforced by the entire chamber orchestra. The scene is the opera’scrux and catastrophe, and yet “nothing happens.” The music does-n’t act out resolution, the boy doesn’t act out understanding, theteacher doesn’t act out remorse or relief. Weill has outdone himself:extreme simplicity and total clarity have not created the full under-standing, but a Feeling that Transcends Cognition.

That feeling could be ex-ploited to tremendous effect.I can imagine this scene in-fused with the paradoxicalintensity Zeami describes:the dialogue declaimed withfierce, impossible tensionunder relentless control; tautsilences which suspend timein charged air; threadbarevocal lines and homely pianochords delivered with awholly disproportionatebeauty and polish, “flowersblooming on a rock.” And,presiding over the entirescene, an unflinching tone ofconcealment—of a depthwithin this simplicity, whichyet remains unfathomable.That this limitlessness mightbe an illusion is not at all acontradiction. As Zeami ex-plains, “What supports theseillusions and gives them lifeis the intensity of mind in theactor. Yet the existence of thisintensity must not be showndirectly to the audience.”

Looking to Zeami foradvice on a production of DerJasager would entail a blatantmisreading of Weill’s andBrecht’s Lehrstück approach.

But then again, Weill’s and Brecht’s own various writings demon-strate how frequently and quickly they could change their minds.Works can change their mind too, especially if in changing they illu-minate a side in their creator we already sense and savor. Der Jasagerplayed the role of a tutor to great effect in over three hundredGerman schools in the early 1930s. But on a New York stage in2000, it’s a different work performing a different function; to pre-serve for authenticity’s sake the didacticism of Der Jasager sells thework short. When professionally staged in a double-bill withTaniko, and with the right treatment, Der Jasager could reveal greatYugen, deep, dim mystery. And there’s an irony to savor in thistransformation. By moving Der Jasager from school to theater, bymisreading Weill at and on one point, we might capture Weill on alarger scope, the Weill that Harold Clurman called “all theater, allmask.”

Seth Brodsky is completing a Ph.D in musicology at the Eastman School ofMusic.


Music

Die Dreigroschenoper

The Kurt Weill Edition Series I, Volume 5Edited by Stephen Hinton and Edward Harsh

New York: Kurt Weill Foundation for Music; Miami: European-American MusicCorp., 2000ISBN 0-913574-61-9

While the two-sentence prologue (written by Brecht, but, one sus-pects, with some support from Weill) is often omitted from bothEnglish and German versions of Die Dreigroschenoper, it stands, inthis edition, in all its appropriate contradictoriness on the pageimmediately preceding the Overture. Appropriate, because thissplendid new edition is far removed from the qualified magnifi-cence of the theatrical beggars’ imagination (“Because this operawas conceived on the sort of splendid scale that only beggars mightdream of, and because it needed to be cheap enough for beggars topay for, it is called The Threepenny Opera”); contradictory becausethe declaration immediately signals the confusion or breakingdown of the barriers between “high” and “low,” serious and comic,irony and sentiment, and, yes, text and music that informs everyline and note of the work.

Brecht himself had seen clearly one of the major reasons for thework’s popularity when, in his Arbeitsjournal, he linked it with Derkaukasische Kreidekreis as the only two of his works which could becategorized as “Repertoirestücke.” And although Stephen Hintonsuggests in his typically fluent and searching introduction that“the interpretive literature [on the piece] . . . is not as extensive asone might expect, given the work’s popularity” (p. 29), I think heis slightly astray on two counts. First: his own earlier monographfor Cambridge University Press, taken together with John Willett’seditorial material in the Methuen edition, represents as reliable asurvey of the interpretive issues as one might wish; second, thequote from Dieter Wöhrle he cites on p. 35 (“Brecht’s best-knownwork . . . [which] nonetheless plays a marginal role in scholarship”)points—inadvertently, I suspect—to the major problem with thework for “academic scholarship.” Precisely because it is popular,the real scholar can avert his/her gaze from the shamefully attrac-tive spectacle and move on to higher things like notions of histori-cizing the present-past/mise en scène/viewer/character’s corpo-real presence, etc., or penetrating the postmodern unpresentable.

The two volumes of this edition are models of their kind. Thefirst comprises an introduction, facsimiles, the 1928 text and fullscore, together with appendices including numbers for various rea-sons dropped from or added to the original production. The sec-ond, a sixty-page “Critical Report,” consists of commentary andnotes on musicological and performance-practice details, togetherwith a clear description of the manuscripts and published sources.I suspect that there may be some who would have preferred all thedata and relevant material in one volume, but it is hard to see howthis could have been as manageable as the present solution. At 282folio-size pages, the primary volume is already of a size and scopeto confirm Doctor Johnson’s assertion that “a man will turn overhalf a library to make one book.”

In fact, on the evidence of the list of sources consulted, it wouldappear that the editors, Stephen Hinton and Edward Harsh, haveprofitably trawled through not just one, but several libraries,together with other literary and musical archives. Twenty-threemusical sources, together with a dozen textual sources, are listed inthe Critical Report, and the “Statement of Source Valuation andUsage” is an essential guide through the thickets and undergrowthof this material. The editors make clear their reasons for their priv-ileging of the holograph full score “for all musical dimensions,”while at the same time conceding that some readings are overruledor supplemented. On every such occasion a cogent argument isadvanced for the choice(s) arrived at. Particularly valuable for allmusical directors of the work is the Tempo and Character Markingstable on pp. 49-50, which, by juxtaposing data from four majorsources and several minor ones, provides an indispensable andreadily intelligible overview of the often puzzling variations inmetronome and other markings for every number in the score.(Though it would have proved difficult to accommodate on thepage, it might also have been useful to compare some of these read-ings with the actual recorded performances from the time which arealso listed in the Source Material.) And the same musical directorswill breathe a collective sigh of relief at the sight of the full score,so superior in layout and physical presentation to the previousmaterial as to represent virtually a new piece; while those scholars(mostly German-speaking, though with a few notable exceptions)who have tended to overlook the music-text dialectic can now haveno excuse for ignoring both the primary and secondary materialhere to hand.

Of particular interest for any planned performance is the mate-rial and commentary provided in the four appendices to the firstvolume, in which material both cut from and added to the first pro-duction(s) is reprinted and evaluated, and, in some cases, recon-structed. There might perhaps be an argument for firmly locatingboth “Pollys Lied” and “Die Ballade von der sexuellen Hörigkeit”in the full score proper, if only to guard against any misguideddirectors and conductors opting to exclude the numbers from per-formance on the grounds of adherence to misplaced notions of“authenticity.” But, on the other hand, the editors have been con-sistent in their procedure and in providing clear guidance for thosewho seek to re-insert the numbers in the score—as must be done,given that they constitute some of Weill’s most inspired melodicinventions. The only cautionary note I would sound, particularly inthe case of the latter, would be to trust that any over-enthusiasticperformer of the number might not seize the bit between the teethat the sight of the editors “leaving the choice of dynamic to the dis-cretion of the performer as an aspect of characterization.” I havelost count of the number of times I have heard this number, both infull productions and in Weill recitals, bawled, snarled, growled, orbarked at an audience; these days it seems that “discretion” is notnecessarily the first requirement directors look for when castingMrs. Peachum. Let us hope that conductors and singers who canread dynamic markings as well as text will note the clear piano indi-cations, as well as the editors’ indication that Weill had also origi-nally marked the tenor saxophone p, before replacing it with mf(which makes perfect sense in terms of the instrumental textures.)

Performers and musicians with little or no German may havewished for a bilingual English edition, but a little ingenuity canpoint them in the right direction (or directions). To have venturedinto the translation minefield surrounding the piece might haveextended the publication deadline by a decade. This aside, onemight quibble with the translation of the odd passage in the


Introduction. When Brecht, apropos the writing of the “Moritat,”speaks of letting the actor playing Macheath keep the blue silk tie towhich he was so attached, because the juxtaposition of the descrip-tion of his crimes with the item of dress will allow the actor to comeover “um so unheimlicher,” he was hardly envisaging that “theeffect . . . will be all the more curious” (p. 20). We are not in Alicein Wonderland territory here, but closer to Grand Guignol: “eerie”or “sinister” is surely the meaning. Similarly, to translate“Zersetzung” by one of today’s buzz-words, “subversion” (p. 28),is not quite what the reviewer at the time had in mind. And the con-trast of “Sinnbild” with “irony” might be more aptly, if awkward-ly, caught by “figuration” rather than the flat “symbol” (ibid.).

Occasionally one might have wished for a slightly keener senseof the ironic in Hinton’s comments on some of Brecht’s remarks—given that irony, parody, and self-consciousness are aspects of thework to which he rightly draws attention. I doubt, for example,whether Brecht’s self-interview from 1933(!) is quite such a “bla-tant” expression of his “distance” from the “original incarnation”(p. 29) as Hinton thinks. It is surely just as self-mockingly aware ofthe work’s qualities as was Brecht’s acknowledgment of them in hisletter to Piscator from autumn 1928, when he observes, “She’s agood old honest soul. Her success is most gratifying. It refutes thegeneral view that the public can’t be satisfied—which of course is atouch disappointing for me.”

Both scholars and performers should find their expectations,whether disparate or complementary, more than satisfied by thisedition. At almost every point the user of the edition can find direc-tion, helpful commentary, clear guidance on musical and textualmatters, and above all, a printed score that will replace what, in mypast experience, has been hours of picking one’s way through theearlier Philharmonia Partitur, with the hired conductor’s score andthe orchestral parts to hand in order to clear up questions of nota-tion and dynamics, only to find one’s confusion worse confounded.And it is to be hoped that all those directors who have their ownideas on where the (usually only one) intermission should come willnote the unambiguous indication in the master for the first editionof the libretto that there are to be two intermissions: a short oneafter the first “Threepenny Finale” and a long one after the second.This nod towards a common practice for opera and operetta mustsurely have been in Weill’s mind when he wrote the two finales, andit stands as another performance practice detail that reinforces theparodistic and ironic elements in the work’s structure.

Most of the observations on musical matters are well-gaugedand pertinent, though in one important point in need of (slight)modification. While attention is paid to the borrowings (from selfand others) in the text, it is surely just a little rash to assert that inWeill’s score “it is above all particular types of musical expressionrather than actual compositions that are parodied” (p. 24), and topromptly declare that the Overture “is ‘baroquelike’ without actu-ally quoting from a particular baroque composer.” A quick com-parison of its opening bars will show that in rhythmic shape theyare an exact imitation of bars 43-50 of Bach’s Weihnachts-oratorium—a reverse “Kontrafaktur,” so to speak, with the original3/8 signature altered to 3/4, while the continuo figure for bassoonand organ (bar 45) is given by Weill to saxophones and harmonium.Of course the pitches are different, as is the mood; that is surely thepoint. Whether it might be described as an “art of vandalism” (p.17) analogous to that practiced by Brecht is another question.

Turning forms, styles, and genres inside out and upside downwas a procedure to which both Weill and Brecht were inclined.When Hinton suggests on p. 29 that “the pairing of putative oppo-

sites nicely captures the pervasive ambiguity that remains a con-stant challenge to exegetes,” I was set to wondering whether per-haps this alliterative assertion was not only apt, but maybe evencried out for a musical setting. Might not this veiled acknowledg-ment of the topsy-turvydom which crops up in most of Brecht’swork suggest yet another English connection (apart from the famil-iar Kipling and Gay ones)? And should we now also have a look atthat particular type of comic opera (as well as the operetta and farceto which Weill refers) that Gilbert and Sullivan turned into such anideal and popular vehicle for satirizing and massaging its targetaudience at one and the same time?

Michael MorleyThe Flinders University of South Australia

EEddiittiioonn wwiinnss PPaauull RReevveerree AAwwaarrdd

On 5 June 2000, the Music Publishers Associationawarded a Paul Revere Award for Graphic Excellenceto the critical edition of Die Dreigroschenoper. Theedition won first prize in the folio category. Thetwenty-eight winning publications will be featured inan exhibition that travels to numerous college, uni-versitiy, and public libraries throughout the 2000-2001 academic year. For more information about theaward visit the association’s website: www.mpa.org.


Books

Kurt Weill: A Life in Pictures andDocuments

David Farneth with Elmar Juchem and Dave Stein

New York: Overlook; London: Thames & Hudson, 2000ISBN Overlook: 0-87951-721-1 / Thames & Hudson: 0-50097-487-X

xvi, 312 pp., 905 photographs and documents, 67 in color.

Whoever first pronounced those by now hackneyed truisms, “Everypicture tells a story” and “One picture is worth ten thousandwords” might well have had this latest volume of Weill documenta-tion before them. (For the record, the former first appeared in con-junction with an advertisement for Doan’s Backache Kidney Pills(!) during the early 1900s; the latter is attributed to Frederick R.Barnard, in Printers’ Ink, 10 March 1927.)

Published in conjunction with Musical Stages: Kurt Weill andHis Century, an exhibition presented by the Akademie der Künstein Berlin and New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, thisvolume, by David Farneth, Director of the Weill-Lenya ResearchCenter, with his colleagues Elmar Juchem and Dave Stein, hasraised the pictorial musical biography to unparalleled heights ofexcellence. In twentieth-century music scholarship, the publishediconographies of Elgar (by Jerrold Northrop Moore), Britten(Donald Mitchell), Stravinsky (Robert Craft), and, more recently,Mahler (Gilbert Kaplan) have all, in their time, acted as the bench-mark, but Farneth, Juchem and Stein set standards that one findshard to imagine being bettered. Their achievement has beenmatched by first-rate support from the publishers and the highestquality reproduction by the printers; it is heartening to see Farnethacknowledge the contribution of both, as well as that of the book’sdesigner. The volume’s lavish design is a pleasure to the eye.

As the title suggests, the whole span of Weill’s life isembraced—from his German-Jewish heritage, through the years ofhis formal musical education, the years of the Weimar Republic andhis life as a theater compos-er, his collaborations withBrecht et al., his relation-ship with Lenya, his exodusto America, the war years,composing for Broadway, tohis relatively early death in1950. A prefatory “brieflife,” conveniently dividedinto the volume’s sevenchapters, provides a usefuloverview. Each chapter isgiven its own more detailedchronology of life andworks, as well as (a mosthelpful feature, this) tabu-lated contextual material foreach year under the head-ings: Music & Theater;

Literature & Film; Science & Society; and Politics. For example, welearn that 1926, the year of Weill’s first major stage work, DerProtagonist, was also the year of Hindemith’s Cardillac, DukeEllington’s first records, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the founding ofthe Lufthansa Airline, and the appointment of Goebbels asGauleiter of the Nazi Party.

Photographs of Weill and his associates provide the core of theimagery—from the earliest family portrait of the composer as ababe in his mother Emma’s arms (one can recognize the man’s fea-tures in the child) to the last relaxed shot with his sheepdog Wooly,probably taken only a few weeks before his death. But the volume ispacked with hundreds of other images, not one less fascinating orless evocative than those of Weill himself: autograph manuscriptpages from virtually every major composition, annotated librettodrafts, letters, costume and set designs, production shots of stageworks, programs and theater posters, record labels, newspaper arti-cles and reviews, pamphlets. The whole tapestry of Weill’s profes-sional life is presented here in an astonishing array of material thatleft me reeling in pleasure as each fresh page brought new delights.Worthy of special attention are the three magnificent color gather-ings, whose vibrancy serves to remind one that life then too waslived in full color and not in a sepia haze.

The assembly of these images alone would render this volumesignificant; that excerpts accompany them from Weill’s correspon-dence (both to and from) makes it indispensable. These are given inEnglish in the main text, but the scrupulous compilers have wiselyseen fit to provide an appendix in which the texts are given (whereapplicable) in their original language. This practice is extended toany foreign-language documents reproduced as facsimile in thetext, which are rendered in English translation in the appendix. Acomprehensive index of names and of Weill’s works allows one togain access to specific material with speed and accuracy.

This beautiful volume is a major addition to the Weill bibliogra-phy and an essential purchase for anyone interested in the compos-er and his times.

Philip ReedEnglish National Opera


Musik und musikalisches Theater.Gesammelte Schriften

Expanded and revised edition. Edited by Stephen Hintonand Jürgen Schebera with Elmar Juchem. Includes a CDof Kurt Weill speaking and singing.

Mainz: Schott, 2000. ISBN: 3-7957-0423-5

In 1975, David Drew published Ausgewählte Schriften by KurtWeill; in 1990 the Gesammelte Schriften appeared in an edition byStephen Hinton and Jürgen Schebera under the title Musik undTheater. Ten years later, Hinton and Schebera now have publisheda revised edition, this time headed Musik und musikalisches Theater.The new edition follows the three-part structure of its predecessor.The first comprises articles, essays, and statements to the press; thesecond a selection of Weill’s articles for the journal Der deutscheRundfunk; the third a selection of conversations and interviews. Asbefore, all texts appear in German; the eminently readable transla-tions are largely the work of Jürgen Schebera.

There are good reasons for a new edition. Although a few docu-mented writings have not yet been found (such as the lecture on DieDreigroschenoper for Vienna radio and the “Anmerkungen zurBürgschaft”), several other texts have come to light during the pastten years that round out our picture of Weill in notable ways.Among the newly discovered writings, the reader will find textssuch as “Romantik in der Musik” from the Warsaw journalMuzyka, a comment on the responsibilities of the Intendant ofBerlin radio, a note on the Berliner Requiem for the SüdwestdeutscheRundfunkzeitung (Frankfurt), a contribution to an “Aufruf zu einergemeinsamen Front im Kampf gegen die kulturelle Reaktion” in1930, as well as program notes for the premiere performances DerLindberghflug and the Second Symphony.

Newly added from Weill’s papers is a typescript, “Was istmusikalisches Theater” (“What Is Musical Theatre?”, 1936) and“Notizen für eine Antwort an Harold Clurman” (“Notes for aReply to Harold Clurman,” 1950). Other additions include threenewspaper interviews (from 1929, 1937, and 1947) and threeAmerican radio interviews. A few texts are illustrated with reducedfacsimiles of the originals; here and there the (still sparse) com-mentary has been expanded. (I found a small correction to theannotations on page 497: in his interview “I’m an American” Weillis not referring to the English Bill of Rights of 1689 but, of course,to the United States Bill of Rights ratified in 1791.) Oddly enough,three texts have been omitted from the previous edition withoutexplanation: “Zur Musik des ‘Ruhrepos,’” “Über die Musik zu Youand Me,” and “Notizen für den Film Knickerbocker Holiday.”

The enclosed CD Kurt Weill spricht und singt represents a valu-able addition. It contains recordings of three radio interviews aswell as private recordings of songs from One Touch of Venus and theopening sequence of The Firebrand of Florence with Weill as singerand pianist. Two additional items should have merited a transcrip-tion or translation in the volume as well. A clip from a French news-reel shows Weill delivering a short speech at the Salle Gaveau con-cert in Paris in December 1932. A similarly brief portion of aGerman newsreel documents a meeting of Berlin theater peoplewith Weill in New York in the summer of 1949, during which he

makes the noteworthy statement (in German with a slight Americanaccent): “I hope that some of the works that I have written hereduring the past fourteen years will be performed in Germany, andthen I will gladly come and attend and help.” Here again, the anno-tations are very brief; one doesn’t learn, for instance, which radionetwork broadcast the series Opera News on the Air.

The second section, containing Weill’s articles for Der deutscheRundfunk, corrects two errors of the previous edition. The begin-ning of Weill’s work for the journal is given correctly (and evenmore precisely than in the old Drew edition) as 30 November 1924,and the new edition also includes writings that were part of theAusgewählte Schriften but had been eliminated from Musik undTheater. Thus the reader no longer needs to consult the two edi-tions simultaneously. Newly added are an introduction to Nicolai’sopera Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, the early, general articleOpern im Rundfunk, an announcement and review of GeorgKaiser’s Juana, a short passage on Walt Whitman, and an article onthe authors Christian Morgenstern and Arno Holz.

Considering Weill’s vast output as a weekly critic over a periodof five-and-a-half years, the selection still remains relatively small.The editors try to overcome this disadvantage by including a com-plete index of all Weill’s articles for Der deutsche Rundfunk.Understandably, a number of unsigned articles showing musicexamples in Weill’s hand were attributed to him; however, creditingWeill with the unsigned announcement of “boxing events” (pp.357-58) hardly seems plausible to me. On the other hand, for rea-sons of style and content I believe that Weill was the author of sev-eral unsigned articles between late 1924 and early 1925 not includ-ed in this volume. Especially regrettable is the omission of interest-ing (signed) articles or passages on Bach, Berlioz, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Georg Kaiser and Leo Tolstoy—not to mention funda-mental issues of programming. Weill’s commentary on the BerlinerFunkstunde’s evening program of 10 January 1929, which he calledthe “ideal radio program” and “the best evening in the history ofGerman radio” (printed in the Musik-Konzepte volume KurtWeill: Die frühen Werke, 1916–1928, pp. 95–96 and 104), does notappear.

The editors’ judgment that Weill’s contributions to Der deutscheRundfunk after 1926 were of lesser quality and quantity, a sentimentretained from the previous edition’s preface, reflects the commonunderestimation of the composer’s writings. Up until he left thejournal, Weill was involved in formulating the editorial line of Derdeutsche Rundfunk for several important issues. Numerous contri-butions by Weill are probably hidden in a section that summarizesshort reviews on various stations under the pseudonym“Ascoltante” (Italian for “listener”) after Fall 1927.

The volume opens with a page of enlightening quotations:“Weill on Weill” and “Others on Weill” (alas, full citations are notgiven). Extremely important is the introduction where the editorspoint out the “continuity in the artistic program as well as in theoutput,” which can be seen in the collected writings. In only a fewprecise, convincing, and gripping pages the editors sketch thedevelopment of Weill’s work for the musical theater over the courseof thirty years. In the same way as America seemed to Weill an“advancement of Europe,” Hinton and Schebera illuminate thecontinuity of the “German” and the “American” Weill. Two briefcharacterizations of Weill as a “great ironist” and “ahead of his timeas a representative of ‘postmodernity’,” which are not explored,will hopefully serve as an impulse for future Weill reception.

Andreas HauffMainz

Books


Performances

Wall-to-Wall Kurt Weill

New York CitySymphony Space

25 March 2000

Symphony Space’s thirtieth “wall-to-wall”extravaganza presented what was undoubt-edly the longest all-Kurt Weill concertever: thirteen hours of music ranging fromthe composer’s earliest student efforts tohis unfinished last work, interspersed withoral reminiscences and readings from hisletters to his wife, Lotte Lenya. The popu-lar Upper West Side venue for concerts,theater, and literary readings has been pro-ducing similar marathons since 1978. Overthe years it has given wall-to-wall treat-ment to Bach, Schubert, and Beethoven, aswell as to Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter,and Frank Loesser.

The Weill marathon was like a mar-velously endless variety show, with a cast ofseemingly thousands, both famous andunfamiliar. I missed hearing only twentyminutes of the thirteen hours: the openingKiddush and Legende vom toten Soldaten (Iarrived late) and excerpts from DerKuhhandel, when, at 11 P.M., I made a maddash for a quick taco to survive the lasthour without fainting from hunger, havingeaten nothing since early morning. Thecapacity house bulged with standees forvirtually the entire event; if you left thetheater you had to get back in line to bereadmitted.

The thirteen-hour event laid out theterrain of Weill’s entire compositional lifelike a giant aerial map photographed from asatellite. One could see geologic veins thatare often invisible up close: for instance, thepentatonic tunes of the Brecht works of thelate 1920s linked up with the pentatonicismof some of the Broadway tunes writtentwenty years later, such as “Thousands ofMiles” from Lost in the Stars. One couldcompare the caustic use of saxophones inDie Dreigroschenoper (1928) with their moresubtle use in Down in the Valley (1948). Andthe proverbial “two Weills” (Brecht andBroadway) multiplied into “many Weills”before one’s eyes and ears: we heard theearly Mahlerian and Busonian Weills, theFrench chanson Weill, the Palestine folk

music Weill, the American folk song Weill,and, most intriguingly, the posthumous butthriving rock and electronic Weills.

Several rarely heard early works wereperformed. The 1916 Ofrahs Lieder, sungwith great intensity by Nell Snaidas,showed the young composer writing in aBrahms-Wolf vein. The 1917 Intermezzofor piano, sensitively played by SherriJones, was in its second section lessBrahmsian than rhapsodically Wagnerian.But in its first section the harmonic feelingof the Intermezzo’s static block chordaccompaniment anticipates the slow marchof the “Instead of ” song from TheThreepenny Opera. A style similar to theIntermezzo was also in evidence in the 1919song Die stille Stadt, sung by Lucy Shelton.

The earliest work that seemed fullymature, the three-movement 1920 cellosonata (well played by Inbal Segev andpianist Joel Sachs) was a long, amazinglysprawling Mahlerian work with almost toogreat an abundance of ideas. The piece

struck this listener as an encoded operascore, full of hidden arias and recitatives.But in the next two concert works, bothfrom 1923—the op. 8 String Quartet andthe op. 10 Frauentanz, a song cycle forsoprano, flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn, andviola—the composer seemed to return toabstract, non-theatrical thematic develop-ment. The three-movement StringQuartet, a gripping piece, was performedmasterfully by the Flux Quartet, a groupthat recently performed Morton Feldman’ssix-hour string quartet. Frauentanz, morein the style of Stravinsky and Orff (andpossibly Busoni), seemed less convincing.Still, I think that Weill had more to say inthe medium of chamber music but decidedto walk away from it. In any event, he clear-ly never gravitated completely to atonality.No matter how chromatic or dissonant,there were always clear tonal centers inthese early pieces.

Most of the day, appropriately, wasdevoted to Weill’s theater music. Theyoung theater troupe Ensemble Weil fromBerlin performed fully staged renderings ofboth the Mahagonny Songspiel and DavidDrew’s 1975 Happy End Songspiel.


Mahagonny was a tad boring, but HappyEnd came off better. Surprisingly exciting,though, were the Sieben Stücke nach der“Dreigroschenoper” arranged in 1929 forviolin and piano by Stefan Frenkel.Violinist Diane Monroe struck exactly theright tone of brittleness and nonchalance inthis virtuoso arrangement full of off-the-string bowings—a Weillian Danse Macabre.

Symphony Space’s Artistic Directorand emcee Isaiah Sheffer effectivelymounted the 1948 American “schoolopera” Down in the Valley, with libretto byArnold Sundgaard, in an off-book stagedreading format with Clara Longstreth con-ducting the New Amsterdam Singers andthe Mannes College Orchestra. Thoughthe corn is as high as an elephant’s eye inthis piece, it is abundantly tuneful and sen-suously scored. Even today it makes foraffecting theater. Emily Loesser sang andplayed the female lead with a sweet charmand cheerfulness reminiscent of her moth-er Jo Sullivan Loesser (who spoke extem-pore about her role as Polly in the 1950sThreepenny Opera with Lotte Lenya), whileDavid Staller handled the “Greek chorus”role of the Leader with authority and pres-ence. Later, John Mauceri conducted theNew York Chamber Symphony and theRiverside Choral Society in Robert RussellBennett’s lush orchestration of the fiveextant songs from Huckleberry Finn (1950,lyrics by Maxwell Anderson). The crowdwent “Weill-d”; baritone Harry Burneyradiated a Robeson-like presence as Jim,and young Alex Bowen as Huck simply wonthe audience’s hearts.

A great deal of the marathon was givenover to performances of individual songs,whether unpublished and unfamiliar ortried and true. In the rarity department weheard songs with lyrics by OscarHammerstein, Howard Dietz, and evenAnn Ronell, the Gershwin protegée whowrote “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf.”We heard songs dropped from shows: goodones like “Who Am I?” cut from One Touchof Venus, entertainingly sung by DavidGreen, as well as songs less than top-draw-er, like “It’s Never Too Late toMendelssohn,” Danny Kaye’s original bignumber from Lady in the Dark (cut fromthe show, much to his disappointment wewere told). Hudson Shad was amusing invarious ensemble and choral songs, includ-ing the barbershop quartet “The TroubleWith Women” from One Touch of Venusand the faux-brindisi “Song of theRhineland” from the 1945 film Where DoWe Go From Here? Two of the Shad, bari-

tone Peter Becker and bass Wilbur Pauley,also appeared in a fine performance of theBerliner Requiem conducted by PatrickGardner, and the quartet reappeared laterin the evening with soprano Judy Kayeunder Maestro Mauceri’s baton in TheSeven Deadly Sins (English translation byW.H. Auden and Chester Kallman); thesepulchral-voiced and gaunt-faced Mr.Pauley was especially droll as the mother.

Mary Cleere Haran represented thecabaret approach to Weill, accompanied bydistinguished composer and jazz pianistRichard Rodney Bennett in “Here I’llStay” from Love Life and “Speak Low”from One Touch of Venus, while Joe Jacksonbrought rock stylings to “Speak Low”(which he dubbed a bossa nova, though it’sactually a beguine) and high camp to“That’s Him.” With great humor andswagger Ute Lemper performed a win-ningly spontaneous, unrehearsed “Ala-bama Song” under Mauceri’s baton, whileAngelina Réaux enriched several songswith her powerful pipes and earth-motherqualities, notably two chansons fromWeill’s French period to the grandlylouche accompaniments of master accor-dionist William Schimmel. Of the manyother fine actor-singers too numerous toname who trod the boards of SymphonySpace, perhaps the best performances inthe Broadway idiom were by MelissaErrico and Judy Kaye. But the audiencebestowed its most thunderous huzzah onthe entrance of Kitty Carlisle Hart, who,once ensconced onstage (after having bro-ken her hip several weeks earlier), remi-nisced “September Song” in a duskyDietrichian contralto.

The thirteen hours also had delightfulvaudevillian aspects. Dancer-choreogra-pher Sally Silvers, costumed in a farthin-gale draped over a fascistic military uni-form, performed her own modern danceversion of “Der kleine Leutnant des liebenGottes” from Happy End, to the TeresaStratas recording. The Klezmatics per-formed tunes from Marie galante withgreat gusto, the trumpeter changing hismute almost every few bars, upstaging theclarinet, violin, and accordion. Dramacritic and Brecht expert Eric Bentley per-formed “The Sailor’s Tango” in a talk-singing style that made no pretense ofmusicality. Of the several high-decibelrock performances of Weill standards(mostly Brecht-Weill) included in a spe-cial, cleverly dubbed section “W2WKW,”perhaps the most interesting was a versionof “Alabama Song” by sultry blonde, black

leather-clad Nora York, sung against aspaceship-like ambience produced by digi-tally multitracked turntables and a remark-ably agile tuba part played by HowardJohnson. No better testament to Weill’sdurability exists than the continuing livelyinterest alternate rockers have in his music.

Punctuating the event throughout andserving as entr’actes during stage setupswere readings of Weill-Lenya letters (fromthe Kowalke-Symonette book Speak Low)by Teresa Stratas and Isaiah Sheffer. Theexcerpts ranged from laugh-out-loud topoignant; Stratas, ever the Duse of theWeill world, was remarkably affecting asshe read Lenya writing about her late hus-band. During another interval, LysSymonette reminisced about both Weilland Lenya. And Kim Kowalke and AngelinaRéaux gave a fascinating insight into Weill’screative process by talking and singingthrough the early and intermediate drafts ofthe Weill-Ira Gershwin song “My Ship.”

As the event proceeded from hour tohour, the program began to run overtime.Inevitably, cuts were made on the fly, so theaudience missed choice items from StreetScene and Love Life. But after such a feast,no one noticed a few missing hors d’oeu-vres. To bask for many hours in the soundworld of one composer is an experience thatevery music lover should enjoy (and learnfrom) at least once. But even after thirteenhours the Weillian enigma remained unset-tled: how did the same creative brain con-ceive the sounds of the op. 8 String Quartetand “Buddy on the Nightshift”? The onlyanswer I have is that he had a phenomenalear, an inexhaustible curiosity, and a self-imposed artistic credo to adapt himself toevery possible cultural context. Kurt Weillwas a polystylist before the term wascoined, and probably the first post-mod-ernist to boot.

A little after midnight, Wall-to-WallWeill came to a perfect close with the pre-recorded Kurt Weill himself singing“That’s Him” through the loudspeaker tothe uncannily synchronized, live accompa-niment tenderly provided by John Mauceriand the New York Chamber Symphony.

Mark N. Grant is a composer of concert and the-ater music. His book Maestros of the Pen: AHistory of Classical Music Criticism in America wona 1999 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award.


Performances Berlin of 1928. All the members of theearly Weill and Brecht mafia are present inthis production, including ElisabethHauptmann (Brecht’s secretary and sup-posed ghostwriter of many of his earlytexts), Carola Neher (a popular actress ofthe Brecht circle), Kurt Gerron (whoplayed Tiger Brown in the Dreigroschenoperpremiere), Helene Weigel (who laterbecame Brecht’s wife), as well as an anony-mous critic, obviously Alfred Kerr, themost influential of Berlin journalists. Onlyone American contemporary, MaxwellAnderson, is listed by name, and he is,ironically enough, played by the same actorwho appears as Brecht.

The revue is thus set in its proper bio-graphical and social context, though it iswritten from a markedly pro-Weill point ofview (Brecht is characterized as a money-grubber, reckless plagiarist, and insatiablewomanizer). Europe’s deteriorating politi-cal situation comes to the fore during thelater Berlin scenes and takes over complete-ly during the miserable years among theemigrants stranded in Paris. Later, Weill’semphatically pro-American stance is givenfree rein in an interview which he conclud-ed by saying, “I love New York!”. But thebulk of the show resides in its musicalnumbers. The first part draws onMahagonny, Die Dreigroschenoper, andHappy End, with individual performersemerging from the ensemble of twenty-five: Oliver Sohl as Weill, Stefanie Dietrichas Lenya, Andreas Berg as Brecht andAnderson, Merit Ostermann as Weigel,Effi Rabsilber as Elisabeth Hauptmann,Simone Arntz as Carola Neher, AndreasKirschbaum as the anonymous critic, FelixPowroslo as Gerron, and AlexandraSeefisch as a journalist. In the second part,the refugees in Paris, terribly downtroddenand fatigued, sit forlornly around the pianoplayed by conductor Frank Strobel, step-ping forward one by one to perform theirsongs, “Youkali,” “Complainte de laSeine,” “Nannas Lied,” “Je ne t’aime pas,”and “J’attends un navire.” This part stirsthe audience’s innermost emotions.Occasionally one of the singers seems inad-equate for a particular song. For instance,Arntz merely whimpers her way throughthe “Barbara Song”; “Wouldn’t You Liketo Be on Broadway?” is sung far too timid-ly; and “Moon-faced, Starry-eyed” israther anemic. Otherwise, the New Yorksongs of the third part, including “I’m aStranger Here Myself,” “The Saga ofJenny,” and “Speak Low,” are served upwith appropriate sophistication and, where

the musical section of the Theaterakademiesince 1998. Text and dialogue betweenindividual musical numbers, quotingextensively from contemporary sources,were contributed by Michael Dorner andLida Winiewicz, dramaturgs of theAkademie and the Theater des Westens.Music director Frank Strobel conductedmembers of the Münchner Symphoniker.Harald B. Thor designed the multifunc-tional staircase set, and the costumes, sug-gestive of the different fashions in the var-ious cities, were by Susanne Hubrich. Thewhole show, subtitled “Kurt Weill–SeineZeit–Seine Musik,” brings Weill’s music toglorious life.

Its accent is on youth, naturally, for theperformers come from the second- andthird-year classes of the musical depart-ment of the Akademie, generally consid-ered Germany’s first rank institution forthe training of future stars for the musicalstage—a relatively recent branch of ourmusical education system otherwise con-centrated on providing new recruits for theopera, concert, and possibly jazz circuits. Ifit is at first somewhat surprising to seeWeill, Brecht, Lenya, and their coterieplayed by rather young students, we shouldremember that they were all in their latetwenties (or barely thirty) when DieDreigroschenoper was first performed in the

Ladies in the Light

MunichPrinzregententheater

Premiere: 18 May 2000

One need not have attended every recentKurt Weill performance to conclude that“Ladies in the Light,” produced by theBayerische Theaterakademie, is one of thehighlights of the composer’s anniversary. Abrilliant revue, it covers Weill’s career fromhis beginnings in the Berlin of the RoaringTwenties, through his sojourn in Paris dur-ing the first years of exile, his arrival in NewYork, and his Broadway triumphs, StreetScene, One Touch of Venus, and Lady in theDark. It is directed by Helmut Baumann.Until recently, Baumann was Intendant(general manager) of the Theater desWestens, Berlin’s home of the musical,where he personally supervised manyGerman premieres of American musicals.He might be considered Germany’s HaroldPrince, except that Baumann is also anexcellent choreographer. For this revue, hehas worked closely with Vicki Hall, star ofmany of his productions, who has directed

Ensemble scene from “Ladies in the Light.” Photo: Winfried E. Rabanus.

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aatt LLiinnccoollnn CCeenntteerrThe New York Philharmonic rounded outits Weill celebration with three perfor-mances of “Andrea Marcovicci CelebratesKurt Weill in America” in the penthouseof Lincoln Center’s Rose Building. JeremyEichler reporting in Newsday wrote,“Marcovicci’s love for these ingeniouslycrafted songs was both transparent and,judging by the coos in the audience, con-tagious.”


Performances

Street Scenes

New York Philharmonic

9-11 March 2000

From the Broadway premiere throughrevivals by the New York City Opera, theEnglish National Opera, the HoustonGrand Opera, and even performances atthe Theater des Westens in Berlin, StreetScene has proven itself to be a uniquelyaffecting and effective “Broadway opera,” awork that has survived its half-centuryextremely well. Now, in an effort to reachconcert audiences, the opera—shorn of itssets, costumes, chorus, and vast chunks ofits original score—has been reduced to thekind of potted, excerpted versions ofoperas I remember seeing at Radio CityMusic Hall many decades ago.

It is one thing for a composer to reducehis own full-length opera or ballet to a con-cert version or suite. It is quite another foran arranger to do this, especially when thecomposer cannot participate or approve.This new reduction of Street Scene effectedby Weill champions Kim H. Kowalke andLys Symonette failed to satisfy. ElmerRice’s and Langston Hughes’s carefullycrafted libretto does not respond well toexcerpting, and the stringing together ofthe opera’s more dramatic numbers, with-out the leavening of its many lightermoments and choral ensembles, threw thework out of kilter and turned it into aheavy, often listless potpourri.

Without a visual “street scene” to orientthe action, Lonny Price’s minimal stagingsometimes caused confusion. One con-stantly wondered exactly where the charac-ters were going; for instance, when thesingers made a partial exit to one of thechairs on the side of the stage, did theyleave the street or simply retire to a neigh-boring stoop? Without the full comple-ment of libretto, characters, and chorus,the narrative as presented here oftenbecame confusing, especially to those notfamiliar with the work.

True, the New York Philharmonic has asheen that surely surpasses the usualBroadway pit band. But for all the expres-sive playing under the guidance of LeonardSlatkin, the physical presence of a sympho-

ny orchestra onstage overwhelmed thesingers and helped deprive the evening ofthe work’s gritty, melodramatic theatricali-ty. Nor did seeing the musicians in blacktie and gowns evoke the grim tenement set-ting of the plot.

The vocalists were fine, particularyCharles Castronovo (Sam Kaplan),Christine Goerke (Anna Maurrant), andDean Ely (Frank Maurrant). But the audi-ence could be forgiven for not becomingterribly involved in their concertized char-acters. And the chorus, so crucial an ele-ment in this work, was also profoundlymissed.

When an obscure opera is given a con-cert version because it will not get pro-duced otherwise, all well and good. ButWeill’s Street Scene is hardly comparable,let’s say, to Donizetti’s Ugo, conte di Parigi.A purely orchestral suite of the opera’smusic arranged by Weill himself wouldhave been a different kettle of fish. Ah, butthen one might miss the vocal parts. Theanswer to all these problems is simple:revive the opera, as is, more frequently.

Richard TraubnerNew York City

required, with tremendous swagger anddash; the actors thoroughly relish thesauciness of the American texts. Baumann’schoreography really starts to soar duringthe choral arrangements of the Americansongs, infecting the whole auditorium withirresistible sweep and bravura. Small won-der that there were standing ovations at theend.

I have sat through dozens of Weill per-formances in recent years, but none hasexcited the audience as much or made asmany converts as “Ladies in the Light” atthe Munich Prinzregententheater.

Horst Koegler Stuttgart

Director Helmut Baumann rehearses the cast;

Simone Arntz stands to his left. Photo: Archie Kent.

4 2 Volume 14, Number 1 Kur t Weill Newsletter

VViieennnnaa

The Firebrand of FlorenceRadio Symphony Orchestra Vienna21 May 2000

“It was one of [Weill’s] greatest disappoint-ments that his operetta The Firebrand ofFlorence was a failure. It lasted through only43 performances and up to now has beenmerely of interest to archivists. . . [Cellini]escapes several times from the hangman’snoose, but at the end is allowed to love hisAngela. If one were also to pronounce judg-ment on the music, the result would be

clear: complete acquittal for Weill. . . . Hedemonstrates his great mastery beginningwith the twenty-minute through-composedopening scene. . . . The spellbinding duet‘Love is My Enemy’ alone should have beenenough to guarantee a run for this operetta.Conductor Dennis Russell Davies was verymuch in his own metier, had a happy handfor the tempi, and let the RSO gallop won-derfully. Semi-staged with a formidable castof singers: Thomas Hampson (Cellini);Angela Maria Blasi (Angela); Jane Henschel(Duchess), masterful after beginning diffi-culties; Merwin Foard (Duke).”—Wolfgang Schaufler, Der Standard (23May 2000)

“[The Firebrand of Florence] does not wantto be anything more than a good oldoperetta—it makes no sense to apply higherstandards to it. . . . [Edwin Justus Mayer’sbook] first acquires real life through IraGershwin’s lyrics, with their sparkling witand their break-neck feats of rhyme. KurtWeill has poured a cornucopia full ofinspired ideas over them, clothed in the

most luxurious Broadway sound, splendidlyorchestrated and relaxed through a few iso-lated skewed harmonies. A “home game” forDennis Russell Davies at the podium of thelively Radio Symphony Orchestra. Themain reason for the striking success wasundoubtedly Thomas Hampson as the heroof the title: A true firebrand in personality,overwhelming vocal richness, and humorousself-deprecation.” —Gerhard Kramer,Die Presse (23 May 2000)

“[Weill’s] Firebrand disappeared quicklyinto the archives—which Sunday evening inthe Konzerthaus won’t much alter, in spiteof the jubilation of some of theaudience.”—hahe, Kurier (23 May 2000)

“If stars grant themselves a wish, it can nowand then lead to the discovery of somethingspecial: In the Konzerthaus, ThomasHampson sang the role of Benvenuto Celliniin Kurt Weill’s almost forgotten operettaThe Firebrand of Florence—an entrancingcomic work that could even be a hit at theVolksoper!”—Karlheinz Roschitz, NeueKronen Zeitung (23 May 2000)

Berlin im Lichtand Mahagonny SongspielEnsemble “die reihe”20 May 2000

“Last appearance of the season for HKGruber at the ‘Musical Xchanges’ ofJeunesse and the Vienna Konzerthaus: WithEnsemble ‘die reihe’ and good soloists, hewas inspired and inspiring in his explana-tions and interpretations of Kurt Weill. His characteristic brash and casual chattingstyle, which always dashes straight to thegoal, in spite of a few somersaults along the

way, has already marked the previousevenings. But the latently nervous, almostjuvenile enthusiasm, with which Heinz-Karl Gruber’s musical surgery revealed thecompositional qualities of Kurt Weill, one ofhis idols, was a particular pleasure. . . . TheEnsemble ‘die reihe’ generated a brilliantlycaustic, sparkling sharpness, that offeredstimulus to the consistently fine vocalsoloists (Ute Gfrerer, Timna Brauer, NealBanerjee, Bernd Fröhlich, MathiasHausmann, and John Sweeney). Exuberantapplause led at last to another outpouring of‘Berlin im Licht.’”—wawe, Die Presse (22 May 2000)

CCoollooggnnee

Cologne MusicTriennale

ZaubernachtEnsemble Contrasts1 June 2000

“The first German performance since 1922of Kurt Weill’s ballet Zaubernacht must becounted as one of the most important eventsof the Triennale. The original score andorchestra parts have been lost. However, onthe basis of the composer’s piano/vocalscore, the British conductor and arrangerMeirion Bowen has reconstructed a cham-ber music version, which should inspirerespect in the listener for its color and orig-inality, particularly since Celso Antunes andthe orchestra, consisting mostly of musi-cians from the WDR Symphony, playedwith fresh musicality and youthful fire in amanner far exceeding what one would haveexpected as a customary ballet accompani-ment.”—Hans Elmar Bach, KölnerStadt-Anzeiger (3 June 2000)

“Antunes had coached the work to perfec-tion, so that it ranged between musical,revue, composition for toy music box, andracy romantic sleighride. In between therewere harp-supported waltz rhythms, fol-lowed by constructed chamber music fromthe string quartet. The high art neverbecame heavy and the ‘light’ sounds wereheld at the highest level with humor andcharm — a musical Magic Night at theMusic Triennale Köln.”—Olaf Weiden,Kölnische Rundschau (3 June 2000)


Press Clippings

Konzerthaus Vienna

Kur t Weill Newsletter Volume 14, Number 1 4 3

The Seven Deadly SinsRadio Symphony Orchestra Wien2 June 2000

“. . . the enthusiasm in the Philharmoniemounted as Marianne Faithfull, an icon ofthe ‘60s, was celebrated at the end. Thisexperienced diva radiated a striking mel-lowness in Kurt Weill’s The Seven DeadlySins. . . as an interpreter of both Anna fig-ures, she intentionally transposed the origi-nal version into the decadently coloredlower octave. . . in contrast to the high-fly-ing pathos of the self-righteously pious andmoney-idolizing family, exemplarily per-sonified by the ensemble of Hudson Shad(Eric Edlund, Roy Smith, Peter Becker,Wilbur Pauley). . .”—BC, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger (5 June 2000)

DDeessssaauu

Kurt Weill Fest Dessau 18 February - 5 March 2000

Die sieben TodsündenDeutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen18-19 February 2000

“[Patrik] Ringborg, who has already statedthat he will not be available to be ArtisticDirector next year, provided some fresh air:A visible sign was the invitation to Milva,who sang Die sieben Todsünden at the open-ing concert. The diva knows how to trans-late the story of the schizophrenic Annainto impressive mimicry and gestures.Sometimes she screams, and at times Milvaonly whimpers, but when she sings, hervoice manifests an unvarnished dazzlingstraightforwardness.”—Hagen Kunze,Leipziger Volkszeitung (22 February 2000)

Wind Orchestra ConcertStockholms Spårvägsmäns Musikkår26 February 2000

“The program consisted of compositionswhich had been planned for theDonaueschingen Kammermusiktage 1926and for the first great light show in the Spreemetropolis, “Berlin im Licht” (1928). TheSpårvägsmäns Musikkår played music whichhad not been heard since its premiere. . . . Butthe ‘Streetcar Musicians’ under Ringborg’s

baton played astonishingly tamely. The morethe conductor wanted, the clearer his crafts-manship, the less he was able to inspire themusicians to enthusiasm. But that is exactlywhat these works needed.”—MitteldeutscheZeitung (29 February 2000)

“This Time Next Year”Die Schönen der Nacht3 March 2000

“On the third and last weekend of theFestival, the public was introduced to a less-known side of the musical output of KurtWeill. . . . The staged evening combinedWeill’s Berlin theater songs of the late 20swith fragments from the unfinished musicalHuckleberry Finn (1950) and songs from thefilms You and Me (1937) and Where Do WeGo from Here? (1945). In creating the pro-gram, dramaturg Nils Grosch took intoaccount the original dramatic contexts. Intheir acting and singing, JulianeHollerbach, Leopold Kern, and HerbertWolfgang developed a new story line. . . .From Weill’s notes quoted between songs,his frustration with the Hollywood movieworld could be surmised, and one gainedinsight into this part of the composer’smusical work. . . . The audience thanked theFreiburg ensemble with sustainedapplause.”— Zerbster Volksstimme(7 March 2000)

Orchestra ConcertMDR-Kammerphilharmonic3 March 2000

“As often happens at the beginning of aprogram, in ‘Berlin im Licht’ somethingwas lacking in the coordination betweenthe conductor’s podium and the soloist. . .. But by “Alabama Song” Daniele Zieglerand Peter Hirsch obviously had gotten usedto each other. In comparing these withother interpretations, one again comes to

the conclusion that, withthe exception of LotteLenya’s, there is no com-pletely satisfying way ofsinging [these songs].Rather, concentrating onthis or that style of per-formance considerablyreduces the art of a uni-versal-minded Weill. For‘Nannas Lied,’ Zieglernestled into the curve ofthe grand piano, uponwhich Peter Hirsch ac-companied her, and hersinging likewise nestledinto the ears of the lis-teners. Her readingsalternated between naive

gentleness and cheeky insolence. . . . Finallyone could again hear songs from Mariegalante. ‘Youkali,’ ‘Le roi d’Aquitaine’ andnaturally ‘J’attends un navire,’ which laterbecame such a touching hymn of greetingfrom the French to the landingAllies.”—Axel Nixdorf, MitteldeutscheZeitung (7 March 2000)

“Berlin im Licht”London Sinfonietta5 March 2000

“HK Gruber, the well-known Weill special-ist, put together a concert program of someof the composer’s rarely performed works. .. presented with the highest virtuosity andgreat joy in playing. The curtainraiser wassparkling and snappy. The informallydressed conductor not only led his musi-cians in Weill’s 1928 song ‘Berlin im Licht,’but he also sang it. . . . The centerpiece ofthe first half of the concert was theConcerto for Violin and Wind Instruments,op. 12. . . . the London Sinfonietta and ClioGould gave the work a brilliant interpreta-tion. . . . At the end there was the betterknown Kleine Dreigroschenmusik, again areal musical firework. The applause wasstormy for the piece and for the whole con-cert, ending only after three encores hadbeen played.”—Antje Rohm, ZerbsterVolksstimme (8 March 2000)


“This Time Next Year”

CClliioo GGoouulldd.. pphhoottoo:: JJeennss SScchhllüütteerr


Recordings

Die Dreigroschenoper

Ensemble ModernHK Gruber, conductor

BMG 74321-66133-2

This brilliant new CD comes attended bythe highest of expectations: the first record-ed performance to be based on the authori-tative Dreigroschenoper volume of the KurtWeill Edition; instrumentalists from one ofthe world’s leading avant-garde ensembles;singer-actors at the forefront of theirrespective genres; and all under the capablebaton of a Viennese cabarettist-conductorwho is himself a composer of note and hasconsistently illuminated Weill’s works inthe past. And how many recording projectscan claim—as acknowledged in the KWEedition—to have played a role in refiningaspects of the edition upon which they arebased?

It is safe to say, minor cavils aside, thatthese high expectations have been met.Those looking for an exact acoustical real-ization of the new KWE text will be disap-pointed, for the performers have grantedthemselves the license allowed to all livingrecreations of great music. In the “ZweitesDreigroschenfinale” (Second ThreepennyFinale), when the score calls for laut gerufenand we hear instead not a “loud yell” but anominous whisper, we realize with relief thatthe creative impulse has not succumbed toa misplaced obsession with fidelity. Nor arethe subito meno mosso and concluding break-neck prestissimo of the “Erstes Dreigro-schenfinale” (“First Threepenny Finale”),or the subtle tempo shifts and fermatas ofthe “Barbarasong,” to be found in the pub-lished score. These and similar departuresfrom the codified text are perfectly right incontext, and, hallowed by this recording,are likely to remain or become part of theDreigroschenoper performance tradition.

Quite apart from the sterling qualities ofthe performance itself, listeners of this CDwill immediately be struck by its complete-ness, for it incorporates all those instru-mental interludes and reprises (or at leastthose that permit reconstruction) that wereheard in the early years of the work’s recep-tion. Perhaps the most surprising is a waltz

version of the “Moritat” following the“Eifersuchtsduett” (“Jealousy Duet”).These numbers, deliciously performed bythe Ensemble Modern, are valuable addi-tions to the score as previously known, andwe can only regret that the surviving partsare not complete enough to divulge theminor-key version of the “Moritat” thatapparently served as a funeral march.

The twenty-three instruments calledfor in Weill’s score, and originally negotiat-ed by Lewis Ruth’s seven-man band, havehere been distributed among no fewer thanfifteen members of the Ensemble Modern,including two percussionists. While thereis no cause to lament this lack of fidelity tothe premiere (multi-instrumentalism,deliberately flaunted, was a mark of pro-fessional expertise among WeimarGermany’s dance bands), this does raisesome questions about the nature of thebackup ensemble to any performance ofDie Dreigroschenoper. Should each part betaken by a virtuoso and the whole played assuperior concert music? Or should theaccompaniment have the same slightly adhoc flavor we expect from the singer-actors? Originally the musicians per-formed onstage, and the sight of a trom-

bonist turning clumsily to a double bass, ora percussionist gamely wielding a secondtrumpet, was doubtless part of the “beg-garly” theatrical effect. Admirers of thisCD will claim that the exquisite balance ofthe Ensemble Modern and the superb vir-tuosity so amply demonstrated in the“Drittes Dreigroschenfinale” (“ThirdThreepenny Finale”) more than compen-sate for any loss of theatricality—which isnot, however, to deny that loss.

The completeness of this recording alsoextends to the instrumentation, whichmakes full use of the many ad lib. doublingsindicated in the score. The most striking isthe appearance of a Hawaiian guitar, theforerunner of today’s steel guitar and a sub-stitute in the 1920s for that staple of earlyWeimar novelty bands, the musical saw.The broad portamento favored by theEnsemble Modern’s guitarist is fully inkeeping with the spirit of the score, but histendency to lag behind the beat in imitationof 1930s swing style is not. This is even lessappropriate in that the other instrumental-ists avoid swing altogether, playing crisplyaccurate dotted rhythms and clean, almostdisembodied timbres. Weimar Germany’sperformance manuals were adamant in


demanding that renditions of dancemelodies adhere strictly to the written notevalues, and guitarists would be well advisedto follow those guidelines in this case.

The vocal parts have been strongly castfrom different worlds of the German enter-tainment scene. The versatile HK Gruber,as Peachum, can draw on his experience inViennese cabaret and on a voice of proteanexpressive range, encompassing especiallyhis rasping growl at fortissimo (applied inthe “Zweites Dreigroschenfinale” [as partof the chorus] with all the force of a sancti-fied preacher) and a flesh-creeping mockinnocence familiar from performances ofhis own Frankenstein!!. Max Raabe, asMacheath, has made an estimable career asa latter-day crooner in the 1920s tradition,deftly imitating the trilled r’s and periodvowels of the genre. His smooth vocaldelivery, fashionably just beneath pitch atcrucial moments, lends Macheath a con-vincing air of arch suavity and pretense thatmay well become definitive for the part.Equally impressive are the reserves ofexpression he demonstrates in the“Kanonensong” (“Soldiers’ Song”) andthe “Zweites Dreigoschenfinale.” SonaMacDonald, as Polly, brings to her part all

the advantages of a superior actress (she hasperformed under Peter Stein at theSalzburg Festival) and a wiry, operetta-honed voice that successfully projects boththe youthful ingenue and the high-strungbusiness woman. Jenny is ably if not out-standingly sung by Timna Brauer, a popvocalist who once represented Austria inthe Eurovision Song Contest. Lucy,expertly sung by Winnie Böwe, is almostindistinguishable from Polly in the“Eifersuchtsduett” but otherwise suffersfrom the fact that her showcase aria istransplanted to the end of the second CD,where it functions as a sort of endnote forthe sake of completeness.

The most striking voice on the record-ing, and certainly the most controversial, isNina Hagen’s as Mrs. Peachum. Hagenemerged in the early 1980s as a remarkablepunk vocalist who quickly outgrew hernative East Berlin and left for America,where her career unwarrantably refused totake off. She brings to the role of CeciliaPeachum a genius for outlandish overstate-ment and a ruined high register that leavesus wondering from what vocal wellspringsshe will manage to finish each number. HerMrs. Peachum is a comic-book monstre

sacré that makes the “Ballade von der sex-uellen Hörigkeit” (“Ballad of the Prisonerof Sex”) one of the highlights of the record-ing. Fortunately, she constrains her voice toa feigned girlishness in the “ErstesDreigroschenfinale” so as not to overpowerPolly, but it is perhaps telling that Hagenhas not appeared in the Ensemble Modern’srecent concert performances of DieDreigroschenoper with the same cast andconductor.

The voices on this CD clearly shift theexpressive weight of the performance awayfrom Macheath and his female entourage tothe older generation of the Peachums. Yet itis mean-spirited to cavil at shortcomingswhich would be highlights in any other per-formance. The jaunty brilliance and deftperfection of the orchestra and the sharp-ness of the vocal characterization willensure this CD a place alongside thefamous Brückner-Rüggeberg reading of1958 as a milestone in the interpretation ofDie Dreigroschenoper.

J. Bradford RobinsonHoya, Germany

The front and back covers of the Dreigroschenoper

CD booklet show the principal cast. On the front

cover (facing page), clockwise from top left: Max

Raabe (Macheath), Nina Hagen (Mrs. Peachum), and

HK Gruber (Mr. Peachum). Back cover, clockwise

from top left: Sona MacDonald (Polly), Timna Brauer

(Jenny), Hannes Hellmann (Tiger Brown), Jürgen

Holtz (narrator), and Winnie Böwe (Lucy).


Recordings

Die Bürgschaft

Spoleto Festival USAJulius Rudel, conductor

EMI 5 56976 2

Given the current crisis in the classical-music industry, particularly when it comesto new opera recordings, it is a credit to allinvolved that EMI could be persuaded torecord the American premiere of DieBürgschaft at the 1999 Spoleto Festival. It isa work overshadowed by history and leg-end, known more by reputa-tion than anything else; thisis its first recording. Its firstperformance took place atthe Städtische Oper, Berlinon 10 March 1932, in thetumultuous days before thepresidential elections inwhich Hitler was a candi-date for the first time. Thedoubly entartet Weill wasattacked by the Nazi pressand Alfred Rosenberg’sKampfbund für deutscheKultur, and the interestshown in the work by otherGerman stages soon evapo-rated in the face of practicalrealities. After the Anschluß,the Nazis raided the officesof Weill’s publisher, Univer-sal Edition, and destroyedall copies of the libretto andpiano-vocal score; Weill’sfull score was rediscoveredonly after his death, andthat for the “new scene” in act II was notrecovered until 1993. (A 1957 revival inBerlin was clouded by postwar circum-stances and cold-war politics.)

Why has such an important work by amajor composer remained unknown for solong? As Kim Kowalke writes perceptivelyin the liner notes, the answer “wouldrequire a monograph about twentieth-cen-tury musical aesthetics, cultural politics,and reception history to answer satisfacto-rily.” The short answer, however, is one oflack: Die Bürgschaft lacked a Lenya role, alibretto by Brecht, and readily extractablesongs. Furthermore, it requires operatic

rather than theater voices, and two excel-lent choruses. Happily, both these demandsare amply met by the present recording.

Although Weill never publicly tookcredit, he worked closely with CasparNeher on the libretto. Die Bürgschaft is asobering indictment of capitalism anddemagoguery. Its critique of the progressof urbanization and civilization is embed-ded in the cynical “moral” that recursthroughout (“People do not change; it isthe circumstances that change their behav-ior”) and embodied by the opportunisticand amoral Gang of Three (excellentlyportrayed by Peter Lurié, Lawrence Craig,and Herbert Perry). For the most part,their music is the sleazy dance music of the

legendary “Weimar Weill.” In goodBrechtian fashion, it is thus immediatelymemorable, and the audience is made com-plicit in their amorality as it leaves the the-ater humming.

Die Bürgschaft does not really progressso much as regress: the titular pledge orbond depicted in the prologue weakens andunravels as corruption gradually sets in,beginning with Mattes’s credo in no. 4: “togive but little, while retaining a lot: that isthe way to get rich!” A weakness—proba-bly deliberate—of the libretto is that thecharacters are mostly cardboard: Anna andLuise, the only two female characters, are

largely passive and helpless throughout;Luise particularly serves more as a sym-bol—of innocence literally and figurativelylost—than anything else. Both the enlight-ened Judge and the totalitarian Commissarare one-dimensional, although Weill’s deci-sion to write both roles for tenor results inan interesting parallel implied between thetwo (like Wagner’s Licht-Alberich andSchwarz-Alberich). The central charactersof Mattes and Orth are the most fullyrounded—particularly Mattes, who isgiven a full operatic scena (no. 8) in whichto agonize about what to do with the moneyhe has found in sacks of chaff. His wifeAnna has some of the most beautiful musicto sing, however. The heart of the workrests in the two choruses: a small chorus,which, situated at a distance from theaction, comments on and explains the plotto the audience; and a large, onstage chorus

that gets progressively moreinvolved in the action. Thesmall chorus distances andritualizes the action; fromit, a solo alto voice emergesto embody the principle ofindividuality and individualresponsibility inherent inthe bond or pledge. Theonstage chorus functions asa negative symbol of theunindividuated masses. It isfirst heard offstage (menonly) announcing the ar-rival of the town crier afterthe first trial, then entersthe action (again, men only)during the second trial. Thefull chorus, men andwomen, dominates the thirdact: the ritual progressionthrough the portals of War,Inflation, Hunger, andSickness and the murder ofMattes.

As Andreas Hauff has argued, DieBürgschaft is highly intertextual; both itstext and music allude to other works.Turning to the text first, the most obviousof these allusions are scriptural: the parableby Herder that forms the basis of the actionactually comes from the Talmud; Orth’sabandonment of Mattes recalls Cain andAbel; the Judge is an Old-Testament fig-ure; and, finally, the pledge or bond of thetitle might also be translated as “covenant”(and is symbolized by a rainbow in the pro-logue). There are even some NewTestament echoes, such as that of Peter’sdenial of Christ in the Commissar’s refusal


to aid Mattes (“I do not know the man”);indeed, the whole structure of the piece,framed by the narrative small chorus,recalls that of a Bach Passion. Other allu-sions are to the eponymous Schiller ballade(set by Schubert), Seneca (some lines arequoted directly), Marx, Gandhi, Tolstoy,and Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. Therather static procession through the fourportals, largely portrayed chorally, suggestsa left-wing parallel to Franz Schmidt’sslightly later Buch mit sieben Siegeln. And ofcourse one of the strongest models isBrecht, obvious in the deliberate distancingeffect of the small chorus and the ratherhieratically contructed plot—not to men-tion the strong left-wing orientation of thework as a whole. (As for an intertextual linkin the other direction, “The Fog Scene”[no. 9 “Jetzt ist es Abend”] reminds me of“Someone in a Tree,” from Sondheim’sPacific Overtures.)

In terms of the music, the obviousintertextual link is the use of popular dancetypes (as well as those gestic families ofrhythmic figures discussed in Kowalke’s

Kurt Weill in Europe) and Weill’s unmistak-ably characteristic piano-tinged orchestralsound. There is also a strong neobaroqueor neoclassical element: much of the scorecalls to mind the Weill of the “Crane Duet”from Mahagonny or the Hindemith ofCardillac and other works. The musicexemplifies Weill’s prescription in his essay“The Problem of Form in Modern Opera,”published just before the premiere of DieBürgschaft: “the renunciation of the illus-trative function of music, the elimination offalse pathos, the division of action intoclosed musical numbers, and the dramaticutilization of absolute musical form”(Kowalke, Kurt Weill in Europe, p. 542).These principles are especially obvious inthe Fog Scene, where the music is asdivorced from any connection with the textor dramatic action as is the famousPantomime (duet for two flutes) fromCardillac. (In Die Bürgschaft, this discon-nection is explicitly thematicized by thesituation, where fog, both literal and sym-bolic, prevents Mattes and Orth from com-municating, and the basses in the small

chorus offer an irrel-evant meteorologicallesson.) A number ofarias with obbligatoinstruments (such asAnna’s “Mir liegt dieAngst” in no. 2, orOrth’s “Sicher spätin der Nacht war’s”in no. 6, both withoboe) strongly recallBach, as do the manyorchestral and choralcanons and fugues.There is a strongmusico-dramatic par-allel between the ideaof the bond andWeill’s use of canonicor fugal structures.As the work pro-gresses and the bonddisintegrates, thesedevices are used lessand less, as if themusic too loses theability to organizeitself in strict, coop-erative, and egalitari-an structures. If theseelements suggestBach, the significantchoral part pointsmore to Handel, thesubject of an impor-

tant revival during Weimar. This static,oratorio-like element of Die Bürgschaft isalso seen in a preponderance of ternarystructures in the musical numbers.

Perhaps inescapably with this premiererecording, one tends to listen more to thepiece than to the performance. Both areindeed excellent. Despite the work’s repu-tation for length, the recording fits easilyon two CDs, lasting just under two-and-a-quarter hours. Apart from a number ofminor cuts (in nos. 5, 10, 12, 16, and 24),amounting to less than ten minutes ofmusic, the score is played as Weill wouldhave heard it in 1932 (including the “newscene” in act 2, which was composed inearly 1932 and hence not printed in thepiano-vocal score). There are no real“name” singers here, but the reviews of theSpoleto performances emphasize the uni-form strength of the cast. The performers’commitment to the work—especially thatof eminent opera conductor and Weillchampion Julius Rudel—has transferredwell to CD, so well that it seems churlish toquibble over minor irritations. Mezzo-soprano Margaret Thompson is very mov-ing throughout as Anna, particularly in herdeath scene (no. 23). Two strong bass-bari-tones are needed for Mattes and Orth (oh,to hear Hampson and Ramey in theseroles!), and while Frederick Burchinal(Mattes) and Dale Travis (Orth) are gener-ally good, they both can sound a bit tightand constricted on the high notes, Travis inparticular. In Die Bürgschaft the chorus isas central to the work as the solo singers, ifnot more so, and The Westminster Choir isa model of clear diction and well-roundedchoral tone. The recording is not “pro-duced” in the 1950s-60s Decca sense: itdoes not aurally convey the separation ofthe two choruses, the difference betweenthe uninvolved small chorus and the largerchorus. Likewise, no attempt is made todepict (in no. 12) the distance between theJudge on the stage and the offstage crowdlistening to the Town Crier. These are onlyvery minor criticisms, though, of what wasto me a revelatory recording. One couldhardly wish for a better first presentation ofwhat remains a timely work for our age, anage in which, still: Everything occursaccording to one law only: the Law ofMoney, the Law of Power.

Stephen McClatchieThe University of Regina

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Germany’s Picture of Kurt Weill in 2000

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