Whether you run to
Fassbaender in the Seven Deadly Sins,
employing a lieder singer’s pointing
and idiom, or to the exquisitely sung
but somewhat less well characterised
von Otter there are certainly voices
to suit most tastes (Lenya’s I suppose
we needn’t even touch on). Even amongst
the competition the combination of Migenes
and Tilson Thomas produces something
unusually remarkable, in this last major
collaboration between Weill and Brecht.
Migenes occupies a distinct place in
a piece that responds amazingly well
to lieder intimacies, operatic drama
and refined classicism. Hers is an operatic,
outsize sensibility but it’s entirely
convincing both in voluptuous sensuality
and also in superfine impersonation
(as for example of the two sisters in
Lust). Rightly the texts
are explored with lacerating exposure
as she extracts every ounce of evocative
sensuousness and contempt from the suggestive
lyrics. Tilson Thomas’s symphonic understanding
of the score is equally profound and
the superlatives run to the men of whom
Alan Opie is outstanding in Sloth
and Robert Tear adds his clarion tenor
to Gluttony.
Tilson Thomas is at
his most charismatic in Pride
where his subtle conducting manages
a vivacious drama that is sustained
throughout the length of the recording
though in the Molto agitato Anger
he and the LSO generate even more
heat. There is a sense of corporate
instrumental and vocal virtuosity here
that is entirely winning and that applies
equally to the Little Threepenny Music
recorded a year later in the same location,
Henry Wood Hall. The only blot on the
production is that there are no printed
lyrics. Otherwise, unalloyed admiration
– and pleasure.
Jonathan Woolf
Julia Migenes (soprano) 