CLASSICAL Archives

Moderated Classical Music List

CLASSICAL@COMMUNITY.LSOFT.COM

Options: Use Forum View

Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Steve Schwartz <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Moderated Classical Music List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 6 Mar 2008 15:42:42 -0800
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (71 lines)
Kurt Weill
Zaubernacht

Ingrid Schmithuesen, soprano
Ensemble Contrasts Koeln/Celso Antunes
Capriccio 67011 Total time: 58:50

Summary for the Busy Executive: Mentholated chocolate cigarettes, for
the kids.

Weill's artistic maturity, even at a young age, always amazes me.  Born
in 1900, he produced great work by his late teens and signature pieces
in his early twenties.  The "ballet pantomime" Zaubernacht (magic night)
comes from 1922, while he still studied with Busoni.  His first work for
the stage to have survived in any form, also his first commission, and
very likely his first music heard in the United States, the original
score remains lost.  We do have a piano rehearsal score (with a couple
of pages missing), newspaper accounts of the premiere, an orchestra work
(the Quodlibet) derived largely from the ballet, as well as references
in a few of Weill's letters.  For this CD, the piece has been realized
and completed by Meirion Bowen, best known, I think, as Michael Tippett's
musical assistant.

Bowen's main concern has been to provide a "usable" work.  Fortunately,
these efforts have resulted in minimal changes to what Weill actually
wrote.  Holes in the score have been filled with similar passages found
elsewhere in the ballet itself, in the Quodlibet, or in Weill's string
quartet of 1918 - justifiable, since Weill himself referred to this last
work quite often elsewhere in the ballet.  Bowen also changed the original
orchestration of nine instruments slightly: he added a clarinet and had
the flutist double on piccolo.  The clarinet gets music that suits it
best, and the flutist doesn't have to overblow to get through the higher
passages.  Sounds reasonable to me.

The ballet itself - a chamber ballet, if you like - concerns what
happens when the toys in the nursery come to life at night.  That's
about all we know, apart from hints gleaned from contemporary reviews.
Fortunately, the music is abstract enough that you can fit a number of
different scenarios to it.  The idiom isn't quite the Kurt Weill we think
of or even the Kurt Weill of the violin concerto and the first symphony.
It's as if Weill went to a smorgasbord of Twenties music and took a bit
here and a bit there.  One finds a melange of Expressionism, Busoni's
Arlecchino, the New Classicism, perhaps a bit of Les Six, and early
Hindemith, as well as a by-now rare look back to Mahler.  And yet it all
hangs together in a consistent new idiom, just not one that Weill stuck
with.  The variety and vigor of the score and of the colors Weill draws
from the orchestra is prodigious.  My only reservation is the fact that
the music is for a children's ballet, and it's a little dry - no sugar
plums here.  One gets neither the sweetness of "My Ship" nor the sting
of Happy End, rather an objective, "cool" vibe children may not respond
to, despite an appearance from the Toy Fairy.  Nevertheless, it appeals
very strongly indeed to this adult.

We get a fine performance from the Cologne-based Ensemble Contrasts.
Ingrid Schmithuesen, the voice of the Toy Fairy, gets one song.  She's
beginning to get a glassy soprano, as if the voice is about to shred,
but she stops with the one song.  The rest of it is a delight, as the
instrumental ensemble makes its way through waltzes, sassy can-cans and
fox trots, and marches, among other things.  For me, it's a Telemann
suite, modernized.  Antunes, a Brazilian with a European career, keeps
everything moving. It may not be essential Weill, but it's certainly
enjoyable.

Steve Schwartz

             ***********************************************
The CLASSICAL mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R)
list management software together with L-Soft's HDMail High Deliverability
Mailer for reliable, lightning fast mail delivery.  For more information,
go to:  http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

ATOM RSS1 RSS2