Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Weill About Kurt's Second

Nineteeen thirty-three was a busy year for Kurt Weill (1900-50). That�s the year he realized that although he was a successful composer of popular opera in Germany his fame was not going to be enough to protect him from the coming Nazi zeitgeist. His theatre works, including Die Dreigroschenoper (1928), The Rise and Fall of City of Mahagonny (1929), and Der Silbersee (1932), had brought him wide acclaim as the inventor of a new kind of popular opera but the fact that he was Jewish (not to mention, gay) made him a marked man with the Nazis, who began organizing sometimes violent boycotts of his pieces.

In March, 1933, Weill accepted the inevitable, divorced Lotte Lenya (they remarried in 1937) and fled for Paris where he completed his Symphony No. 2. In 1935, he moved to America and quickly became a giant of American theater and song, although nothing he wrote here was as good as his Weimar works. Although the first performances of Symphony No. 2, under Bruno Walter, were well received by the public, the piece was savaged by many critics who suggested that Weill stick to theater. It was to be the last �serious� orchestral piece he ever wrote.

That�s a dirty, rotten shame. Judging from the new recording that Naxos released yesterday of Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 with Marin Alsop and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Weill could have been a contender. Symphony No. 2 is a small masterpiece, in three movements, neo-classical in form, but filled with the jazzy rhythmns and the dramatic shape that characterized his best theater pieces. The music is tonal, but flirts with serialism, and is more complex than it sounds on the surface. It is unmistakenly Weill's voice, speaking in a more refined voice than we are accustomed to hearing.

Like the age in which they were created the first two movements are dark and filled with foreboding but the final movement�marked �Allegro Vivace - Alla Marcia � Presto��is defiantly optimistic, even cheerful, particularly considering that it was written just after Hitler came to power; Weill was on the lam from the Nazis, and he had just ended his marriage to Lenya for the first time.

Weill is so identified with a particular kind of jazzy (not to mention, sleazy) caberet style that it's sometimes forgotten that before he turned to theater, he studied with Busoni and had more classical aspirations. This flirtation manifested itself first in his Symphony No. 1, written at the age of 21, and never performed in his lifetime. Although it lacks the distinct voice and color of the Second, Alsop and the Bournemouthers provide a spirited performance of the one movement work that is thoroughly winning. Alsop is particularly adept at generating perfect performances from imperfect works and she works that peculiar magic again in this instance.

The disc concludes with Lady in the Dark: Symphonic Nocturne, a concert suite of familiar tunes from Weill�s American period, arranged by Robert Russell Bennett, that provide a diverting departure from the dark and unrelenting march of history that has come before. This is a must-have disk, probably one of the year�s best, and Gramophone, deservedly, has made it an Editor's Pick this month. Once again, Naxos has shown itself to be more adventuresome than all the big name brands and�in the process�demonstrated that there is a market for music that is not just the same old, same old.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8/17/2005