Kurt Weill
          Shady Dealing

* Der Kuhhandel (excerpts)

Soloists, Cologne Radio Choir, Cologne Radio Orchestra/Jan Latham-Koenig
Capriccio 60013-1

Summary for the Busy Executive:  Not quite what the composer's fans have
been waiting for.

Hitler's accession to the Chancellorship of Germany triggered one of
history's largest exoduses of brains and talent, from which both Germany
and Austria have only begun to recover.  Kurt Weill and Bert Brecht were
two among many who decided to get out while the getting was good.  Weill
went first to Paris, where he and Brecht collaborated on their powerful
ballet-cantata Die sieben Todsuenden (the seven deadly sins).  After a bit
of knocking about, Weill next went to London, where a West End theater
producer wanted a Kurt Weill "show." After the heady cultural mix of
the Weimar Republic, Weill found himself for the first time in a truly
commercial environment.  He asked Hungarian-born Robert Vambery, formerly
the literary director of the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and now, like
Weill, on the run from the Nazis, for a libretto.  It seemed a wise choice
for Weill.  Among other things, Vambery had translated Gilbert and
Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance into German for a successful run, and
therefore Weill had confidence in his librettist's ability to gauge British
taste.  Unfortunately for the two of them, British popular entertainment
had changed since Gilbert's day, not necessarily for the better.  Weill
was told to cut altogether or to replace some of the more complex musical
numbers with simpler ones - both musically and lyrically (he complied;
new, more conventional lyrics were supplied by Englishman Desmond Carter).
The story changed from a political-ethical one (wherein lay Weill's chief
artistic interests) concerning a U.S.  business propping up a South
American dictatorship to a variant on Zorro - in short, a story of
star-crossed lovers.  Der Kuhhandel ("that business with the cow," or,
more idiomatically, "horse trading" or "shady dealing") became A Kingdom
for a Cow, which closed as a success d'estime after a few performances in
1934.  From then to 1990, the original work I don't believe had been heard.

Historically at least, it's an important score.  It represents the first
step of Weill's journey toward Lady in the Dark - the transformation from
major modernist to Broadway tunesmith and, slightly later, to one of the
great innovators of the American lyric theater.  Weill resurrector David
Drew's essay, "Der Kuhhandel as a Key Work" (from A New Orpheus:  Essays
on Kurt Weill, Kim Kowalke, ed.  New Haven and London:  Yale University
Press, 1986.  ISBN 0-300-04616-2) argues the influence of Offenbach via
the libretto translations and revisions by satirist Karl Kraus and a view
of the work as "Weill's first attempt to write 'light music' as the man
in the street understood it." Drew also points out, however, the music's
considerable structural sophistication, even amid Weill's deliberate
simplifications of style.  It's also the first and one of the most pointed
of his commentaries on the Nazis.  As Drew points out, "Der Kuhhandel ...
could only have been written after March 1933.  Its reflections on the
subjects of dictatorship and war belong to the European era that began
with the Nazi seizure of power." In short, Vambery had provided Weill
with a remarkably multi-layered libretto, and Weill responded not with
his "usual" manner, but with an ardent attempt to renew his theater music
through broader appeal without losing his artistic soul.  That became the
problem he wrestled with for the rest of his short life.  In works like
Johnny Johnson, Street Scene, and Lost in the Stars, I believe he won out.
Kingdom for a Cow shredded, smoothed, and trivialized a complex original
Kuhhandel in the mill of commercial pressure.  Weill had to "learn the
ropes" before he could break free of them.

I should point out that this performance is not the complete score as
Weill and Vambery originally conceived it.  Some of the most interesting
numbers are left out, including "The Ballad of Pharaoh" and a "Disarmament
Fugue." The CD leaves me wanting more.  Vambery had supplied a very
Gilbertian libretto but with considerable political sting, and Weill
responded with music that reminds me very much of the Offenbach "topical"
operettas, filtered of course through Weill's fascination with cabaret
music and his flirtation in this score with "Latin" rhythms.  Where Gilbert
is indulgent toward the foolishness and arrogance of government, Vambery
is mostly scathing, though still funny.  One can well imagine, however,
that British West End audiences didn't really want to hear something so
upsetting in an "entertainment" and in any case wouldn't have gotten the
many in-jokes on Nazi rhetoric.  Weill's music, while simpler than, say,
The Seven Deadly Sins, still makes use of extended arias and scena, rather
than the 32-bar song.  One of the hero's arias, however, starts almost note
for note identical to the later "September Song" from Weill's Knickerbocker
Holiday.  To me, this shows that even on Broadway, Weill never settled for
the commercially tried and true.  It just happened to fail in 1934 London
and click in 1938 New York.  It's not really fair to judge Weill's
Kuhhandel on the basis of this CD, since the most powerful parts of the
score have gone unrecorded.  The excerpts given are fine in themselves,
but not sufficient.  We need a complete recording of this, as well as of
the major scores of Die Burgschaft and Weg der Verheissung.

The performance is capable, but not more than that.  Oskar Hildebrandt as
the villainous General tends to shout, rather than sing, under the mistaken
impression that he's acting.  You often can't tell what notes he's supposed
to hit, but he represents the bad exception.  The rest of the cast is
decent, if not wonderful, although Udo Holdorf's oily Goebbels-like
character is genuinely funny.  Latham-Koenig gives a nice bounce to Weill's
dance-band rhythms and also reveals the Romantic idealism at the heart of
Weill's musical irony.

Recorded sound is a shade too bright, even harsh, but since this is the
only recording of a seminal Weill score, genuine fans like me will have
to bear it.

Steve Schwartz