The Kurt Weill Album (Deutsche Grammophon)

The Kurt Weill Album
Kurt Weill (1900-1950)
Symphony No 1 ‘Berliner Sinfonie’ (1921)
Die sieben Todsünden (1933)
Symphony No 2 (1933/1934)
Soloists listed after review
Konzerthausorchester Berlin/Joana Mallwitz
rec. 2024, Konzerthaus, Berlin
Texts and translations not supplied
Deutsche Grammophon 4865670 [82]

This is, I believe, the first commercial recording made by Joana Mallwitz with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin since she became the orchestra’s principal conductor at the start of the 2023/24 season.

Before discussing the many merits of this CD I’m afraid I need to get something off my chest. DG’s documentation, provided in English and German, is inadequate. It consists of a conversation about the two symphonies between Joana Mallwitz and the Weill expert, James Holmes, which is very interesting. There’s also a note about the music by Wolfgang Rathert which is useful though he has been given far too little space to talk about the music in sufficient detail to be able to guide someone who may be coming to it for the first time; in particular, there’s no synopsis of Die sieben Todsünden. But the really serious flaw in the documentation is the failure to provide the German text or any translations of Die sieben Todsünden. Frankly, in a work such as this that’s a criminal omission for a full-priced international release. I suppose one can search the internet for text and translations but one shouldn’t have to do that. Fortunately, I had the text and translation available from another recording which is properly documented; not everyone may have that convenience. So, DG start off with a big black mark; the five singers involved are excellent but you can’t appreciate their performances properly unless you know what they’re singing about. Fortunately, that’s the only negative feature of this release.

James Holmes, referenced above, is the editor of the symphonies for the critical edition of Kurt Weill’s works; I assume that Joana Mallwitz has used Holmes’ editions for these recordings, though there’s no mention of that in the booklet. My first encounter with these two works came decades ago with an LP recording by Gary Bertini (for Argo, I think). I recall I liked the Second symphony but was not so enamoured of the First; I struggled to make much sense of it. I confess that to some – lesser – extent I still do struggle with it. Weill fashioned this one-movement work from incidental music that he had intended for a festival drama by the German politician and man of letters, Johannes R Becher (1891-1958). The title of the drama, as translated in DG’s booklet, was ‘Workers, Peasants, Soldiers: A People’s Awakening to God’, which suggests to me a pretty serious, left-leaning “entertainment”. The symphony was completed in 1921 but then the score was lost for reasons explained by Wolfgang Rathert; as a result, the work was unperformed until 1958.

Though the symphony is in one movement it falls into four clearly defined sections; helpfully, DG track these sections separately. There’s a lot happening in the work, not least in the second section (Allegro vivace. Wild, heftig) and I don’t find it easy to follow the course of the music. Interestingly, when I read the aforementioned conversation in the booklet, after listening to the disc for the first time, I was somewhat reassured. Joana Mallwitz comments that she “hear[s] a young composer who wants to do everything – to learn everything, develop everything, say everything”. James Holmes adds “you can identify the intention to give it a cohesive symphonic structure. He’s kind of saying to the world: Look, I’ve got all these ideas in my head, I just need somebody to help me marshal them, channel them”. So, these musicians who have studied the score in depth seem to see it as a development work. Notwithstanding that, the music is full of incident and interest and, as Wolfgang Rathert observes, the scoring shows the influence of the chamber symphonies of Schoenberg and Schreker. He also cites Mahler’s symphonies as an influence on the scoring; I’m sure he’s right but I detect far more overt Mahlerian influence in the Second symphony. Weill’s score benefits greatly from the incisive, highly committed performance that Mallwitz and her orchestra deliver.

The Second symphony shows a definite advance on the First, I believe. It dates from 1933 and was begun while Weill was still living in Berlin but he finished it later that year in Paris after he’d fled his homeland in the wake of Hitler’s ascent to power. Since he was also working on Die sieben Todsünden in Paris at that time, Johana Mallwitz’s programming of the two works together is apposite.

The Second symphony was premiered in Amsterdam by Bruno Walter in 1934 and I learned two significant things about Walter’s involvement from the booklet dialogue between Joana Mallwitz and James Holmes. One was that Walter urged Weill to give the work a title and a programme but the composer adamantly refused; that surely confirms that he saw this work as an abstract composition. The other was that Walter thought sufficiently highly of the symphony that he gave further performances of it in Rotterdam, New York and Vienna. He was right to place it high regard and the present taut and urgent performance by Mallwitz and her orchestra shows why.

The first movement has a great deal of rigorous and energetic music in it. I find the thematic material and the harmonic language falls easier on the ear than was the case with the First symphony – though that comment is not meant to disparage either work. I also find it easier to discern the structure than I did with the First symphony. This performance strongly projects the music, though the slower episode is sensitively delivered before the energetic music resumes in a whirlwind coda. The slow movement is where I feel the debt to Mahler is most obvious – perhaps because it is a kind of funeral march. But Weill the theatrical composer is never far away; that’s particularly evident when we hear a trombone solo underpinned by a quietly chugging accompaniment (1:35) and then the violins develop the melody in a bittersweet fashion. This is a fine, deeply felt movement which here receives a very good and highly committed performance. In the vigorous finale the thematic material, and the way it is treated, smack of the world of cabaret and theatre. Mallwitz leads an athletic, biting performance. I found Joana Mallwitz’s account of the Second symphony convincing in every respect.

DG place Die sieben Todsünden in between the symphonies. Taking the role of Anna I in this performance is the German singer, Katharine Mehrling. There’s no information about her in the booklet so I looked on her website, where I discovered that she attended drama school in New York and made her theatre debut at London’s Old Vic Theatre. Perhaps most relevant to this present assignment have been her collaborations in works by Weill at the Komische Oper, Berlin with the director Barrie Kosky. That experience shows through in spades here

Die sieben Todsünden was the final collaboration between Weill and Bertholdt Brecht but I think I’m right in saying that it wasn’t a happy end to their work together. Brecht was unhappy about the balletic aspect of the project and, having dashed off the libretto in some haste, collected his fee and departed Paris. The work is a strange concept, with the lead character, Anna, depicted both by a singer (Anna I) and a dancer (Anna II). There’s also an important part for a quartet of male voices, who represent Anna’s family of father, mother (the bass-baritone!) and two brothers. The orchestra is in essence a pit band – there are parts for banjo and guitar – and the deliberately lean, jazzy instrumental textures are crucial in establishing the ambience of the work. The work was originally conceived for a soprano but after Weill’s death his widow, Lotte Lenya revived it but with the music transposed lower to suit her vocal compass. I think I’m right in saying that it’s this version which is more commonly recorded, though I know of at least one recording of the original soprano version: the one which Elise Ross and Simon Rattle made with the CBSO in the early 1980s. Though it’s not explicitly stated, I’m sure Katharine Mehrling and Joana Mallwitz use the revised, lower version.

The performance is terrific. Katharine Mehrling seems to me to be ideally suited to the role of Anna. Her voice fits the music very well indeed and, in my notes, I’ve jotted down several occasions where she particularly relishes the words and the music. She’s biting and characterful in the Prologue, while in ‘Pride’, where the music is a sarcastic waltz, she really brings the text to life. The next section, ‘Wrath’ is one of those where she seems to relish the text even more than elsewhere; ‘Lust’ is another such example. In ‘Envy’, the penultimate section – and final Sin – Mehrling is really vivid and dramatic in her delivery. She really drew me in to Anna’s character through her vocal acting.

The male-voice quartet back her to the hilt. I was especially taken by the way they deliver the sleazy, largely unaccompanied ‘Gluttony’; here, and everywhere else, they characterise their music very effectively. In the ‘Greed’ section I don’t know which of the tenors delivers the big solo partway through; he’s excellent. As for the orchestra, their delivery of Weill’s brittle scoring is spiky and pointed; it’s all highly idiomatic. Joana Mallwitz’s conducting is taut.

Die sieben Todsünden is, by design, a seedy score; I found this performance completely compelling.

The recorded sound is excellent throughout. It’s such a shame that DG have let themselves down with the documentation. In all other respects, though, this is a stylish, first-class Weill compilation.

John Quinn

Previous review: Philip Harrison (October 2024)

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