While
Kurt Weill’s contribution to music for the stage is certainly
well known, it is a sad fact that his works for the concert
platform are restricted to his early years as a composer,
and do not make up the most remembered or performed part
of his output. The ever-adventuresome Marin Alsop and her
Bournemouth Symphony have set about in this recording to
restore some of Weill’s symphonic pieces to the repertoire,
and we as listeners are all the better for it. In her typically
outstanding fashion, Maestra Alsop has given us exemplary
performances of Weill’s two symphonies and a suite of music
intended for a collaborative musical theater project with
Moss Hart and Ira Gershwin - pretty good company, I would
venture.
The
so-called “second symphony” (neither work was given a number
by the composer) was a product of Weill’s study in the late
1920s with famed pedagogue Ferruccio Busoni, who had sent
the younger composer off to work with his sometimes assistant
Philipp Jarnach. Although earlier serious works had been
well received, with orchestral pieces being performed by
no less than the Berlin Philharmonic, the rise to power
of the Third Reich in 1933 effectively eliminated any chance
for Weill’s music to get a performance in his homeland.
After his departure for Paris,
the symphony was premiered by Bruno Walter in both Amsterdam and New York, and
it received luke-warm reviews at best. After these unsuccessful
first performances, it languished on library shelves until
the 1970s when it finally began to see appearances on symphony
programs.
One
must indeed wonder why so fine a composition was so poorly
received. Structurally tight, fascinatingly orchestrated
and full of both melodic and rhythmic interest, it is without
question a very worthy work, if perhaps not the kind of
masterpiece that a Prokofiev or a Shostakovich may have
created in the same time-frame. In a somewhat unusual gesture,
Weill makes the middle movement the axle around which the
entire work turns. With its central rhythmic gesture first
introduced by the entire orchestra, and never straying too
far from earshot, the movement also features a rather haunting
trombone solo, somewhat startling on first hearing since
the instrument seldom takes the soloist’s role in the most
of symphonic canon. The final movement rips along jauntily,
but in spite of its insistent rhythms, the entire symphony
has a veil of darkness about it, perhaps the composer’s
subconscious response to the pending doom in his homeland.
The
Symphony No. 1 is a much more angular work, and is filled
to the brim with ethereal melodies for the principal strings,
and is punctuated with brassy, percussion-laden dissonances
that jar one out of these reveries of melody. A youthful
work, it shows tremendous skill and savvy on the part of
the twenty-one year old composer, and foreshadows the rather
brooding, cynical nature of Weill’s stage works, produced
after his move to the United States, and after the terrible years of the Nazi regime. Cast in a single
movement, it is nonetheless divided into three distinct
sections. Deadly serious, this music is obviously the work
of a young artist trying to prove himself. There is no question
that he succeeds.
The
Symphonic Nocturne, culled from tunes from the stage show
Lady in the Dark is a completely different kettle
of fish from the two more serious and esoteric symphonies.
Fraught with sweeping melody, Robert Russell Bennett helps
to deliver a work worthy of a warm summer night at the Hollywood
Bowl. A very sharp contrast to the other works on this program,
Ms. Alsop was wise to include it as a bit of aural relief
from the tense seriousness of the two symphonies.
Marin
Alsop is in her customary top form throughout. Perhaps the
most remarkable aspect of this conductor’s work is her careful
attention to structure and pacing. I have yet to hear a
performance under her baton that was anything less than
rhythmically spot-on, and her sense of both tempo and rubato
are nearly flawless. The Bournemouth Symphony seems to have
become quite at home with American music (although this
is expatriate stuff), first under Andrew Litton, and now
carried on by Alsop. They play the serious works with determination
and precision, the populist music with ease and grace.
Naxos continue to astound with their dedication to expansion of the repertoire,
and this disc is yet another jewel in their crown. Long
may ‘ole Klaus’ and his merry band of musical ambassadors
live. Tutti bravi! Add this one to your collection soon.
Kevin
Sutton
