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Weill, Shostakovich: Ute Lemper (vocalist), Hudson Shad (vocal quartet), Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Peter Oundjian (conductor), Carnegie Hall, New York City, 4.10.2008 (BH)

Kurt Weill: The Seven Deadly Sins (1933)
Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 11 in G Minor, Op. 103, "The Year 1905" (1956-57)


In an unusual but ultimately effective pairing of Kurt Weill and Dmitri Shostakovich, Peter Oundjian and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra returned to Carnegie Hall for the first time in ten years.  Their guest, the chanteuse Ute Lemper, has built her career on songs in the German cabaret tradition, making her ideal for Weill's Die sieben Todsünden (The Seven Deadly Sins), its lyrics by Bertolt Brecht.  Lemper cuts a striking figure: willow-thin, with icy blonde hair atop a black-dressed frame.  Her distinctive voice has a somewhat metallic timbre when pressed to the top of its range, a quality that she uses expressively, coupled with some slinky shoulder shrugs.  But she has performed this role of Anna so many times that it might be tempting to call her reading iconic.

In seven sections (plus a prologue and epilogue) Weill gives each of the sins a distinct character, such as the a cappella harmonizing in "Gluttony" (done with humor and pathos by the excellent vocal quartet, Hudson Shad) or the foxtrot that appears in "Anger," with the Toronto musicians only needing a few palm trees to complete the night club illusion.

I could not help but wonder if Lemper and the quartet needed microphones in Carnegie's helpful acoustic.  She may feel more comfortable with one—fair enough—and friends in the back of the hall were grateful, but in Weill's louder sections, the brassiness became slightly uncomfortable.  On the other hand, slight discomfort is a staple of Weill's world, and Lemper knows that memorable vocal moments are not always traditionally "beautiful."

Shostakovich's sprawling, emotional Eleventh Symphony can be difficult to bring off, needing a conductor able to maintain an almost unbearable tension over the course of an hour.  In four movements without pause, the composer paints a bleak, sorrowful, yet ultimately stoic portrait of the 1905 massacre in St. Petersburg, where the Tsar's guards shot some 1,000 people in cold blood.  One of the Eleventh's bits of connecting tissue is a block of high strings seemingly frozen in place, with tiny brass fanfares and ominous low percussion.  Despite moments in which the earth seems to crack open (stunningly realized by the Toronto ensemble), the mood often returns to this opening motif, like muted sobs for help.

The audience was one of the quietest I can recall in recent years, so that every gesture registered, such as the song, "You Fell as Heroes" in part three, which the violas delivered like lamenting birds.  Late in the score the orchestra's wail is silenced by a Jupiter-sized percussion volley, after which I could hear my own heart thumping.  After the tumultuous conclusion, with audience members roaring their approval, I couldn't imagine an encore, but leave it to Oundjian to find one: a gentle, richly sonorous "Nimrod" from Elgar's Enigma Variations.

Bruce Hodges


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