It’s been a Weill…
Album Of The WeekFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
The sound of Berlin in the Weimar years is defined by Kurt Weill. More than any other composer, his music for the Bertolt Brecht shows conjured the jittery, reckless, hopeful, resigned, and inventive carousel of a society in perpetual crisis. Weill, son of a Jewish cantor from provincial Dessau, cracked the capital’s musical codes and perpetuated them in songs for his cracked-voice wife, Lotte Lenya. There were also two symphonies, but we don’t talk about those, do we?…
Read on here.
And here.
En francais ici.
Time for His music to be taken for its true value.
I used to like Weill [ who, by the way, pronounced his name with an American ‘W’ not a ‘V’ ], and I still admire The Threepenny Opera. But the rest of his work is for the most part the same several chords and harmonic tropes. Almost every song is the same, and could be used for any of his texts. The Mahagonny operas are depressing [if ‘Moon of Alabama’ is your hit tune, that doesn’t say much for the work]. The violin concerto? Other works? Mediocre. Very repetitive and limited.
„Die sieben Todsünden“ is most certainly not a „concert suite“! It is the score for a ballet – labelled a „ballet chanté“ by its creators – and was written for Les Ballets de 1933, more specifically for George Balanchine to choreograph for producer Edward James’s wife, dancer Tilly Losch, and not for Lotte Lenya (despite being cast as the first Anna I, and again in Balanchine’s staging for New York City Ballet in 1958).
I’m always pleased to explore the music of Weill, as well as Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau. Weill has become very influential in popular music; calling his work mediocre, out of context, is rather shallow.
I first probably enjoyed Weill vicariously, through Carla Bley (RIP), Tom Waits and many others, especially on the glorious Hal Willner tribute.
I then enjoyed playing the actual works live, including Happy End, The Threepenny Opera and others. Still too valuable and influential, (remarkably, considering his short life) to be written off; also to be borne in mind, the essential uprooting in 1933, to escape the Nazis. Tin Pan Alley, Gershwin and the blues are important in jazz, but so is Weill. The standard ‘Speak Low’ is one particular highlight.