The Two Worlds of Kurt Weill." Morton Gould Comes Across Very Vividly in His Own Right, up Weill's and His Orchestra

for he "The Two Worlds of Kurt Weill." Morton Gould comes across very vividly in his own right, up Weill's and His Orchestra. RCA Victor LM 2863, $4.79 is highly articulate and cogent. He points (LP); LSC 2863, $5.79 (SD). theatrical perception in relating how the composer helped him (Nash was then new to the theatre) to grasp the values of quantity and stress when writing KURT WEILL'S music changed radically after he a lyric. Langston Hughes, discussing his collabora- left Europe and came to the United States. tion with Weill and Elmer Rice on Street Scene, pro- and under- What had once been lean, mordant. and dryly biting vides a revealing indication of the depth became, in his early efforts here, surprisingly bland standing of Weill's interest in the blues; he also and conventional. Once Weill had assimilated presents an amusing sidelight on Rice. American convention, he made his points not only In both cases, one gets considerably more from reading by matching the best of American theatrical com- the personal narration than one might from inflec- posers with September Song, but by breaking the same words in print. There are shadings, through American convention with his score to tions, touches of humor, stresses of sincerity that views Lady in the Dark. Morton Gould's collection of are revealing both of the speakers and of their with Weill's songs recognizes the two aspects of his mu- of Weill. The dangers of a Living Liner arise to say sical career by devoting one side of the disc to his personalities who have something interesting As a result. European work and the other to his American the- but are unable to project as readers. on atre songs. But the point about the difference is the potential interest of Ira Gershwin's comments because it is a made less explicitly on the disc than on what RCA Lady in the Dark are diminished his Victor calls a Living Liner. strain to bear with him as he struggles through we The Living Liner is a seven -inch, 331/2 -rpm disc, script. His comments would be more effective if very thin, very flexible, which is packaged between were allowed to read them in print. Liner the plastic cover and the record sleeve. Each side For a first, exploratory try, this Living runs about six minutes and contains. in this instance, suggests that RCA Victor has hit on a device which, recollections of Weill by three of his American lyri- used intelligently, can add considerably to the pleas- a of fact, it cists -Ira Gershwin, Langston Hughes. and Ogden ures of listening to records. As matter which this disc above a rela- Nash -and a brief piano talk on the composer's is the Living Liner lifts music by Gould. tively routine level. Gould is one of the more en- in that genteel area It is a provocative indication of how the tradition- lightened arrangers working distinct from "pop al liner annotation can be extended. The most ob- generally identified as "pops" (as vious value of recorded annotation is that it permits music," which is something else again). But even disc a few the the use of musical examples: Gould demonstrates though he has included on this of how Weill differed from his European contempo- less familiar Weill pieces -Train to Johannesburg and a Star raries by playing the opening passage of Mack the from Lost in the Stars, I Got a Marble from Mahagonny- Knife as it might have been written in conventional from Street Scene, the theme the romantic fashion and, through an excerpt from The his orchestrations are not designed to fluster which prevents him Blue Danube. shows us Weill's relationship to Mit- "pops" audience, a situation Weill's tel-europa in his musical construction and intent. from really exploring the mordant qualities of a -tonk Beyond musical illustration, however, the Living European music. Even when he uses honky is a honky -tonk piano with Liner brings us into contact with three interesting piano on Bilbao Song, it a sunlit sea personalities who, in turn, illuminate Weill as a the warm, bright, enspiriting glow of of Weill's European person and as a craftsman. As he talks about writ- instead of the dry tinniness J.S.W. ing One Touch of Venus with Weill, Ogden Nash world.

109 MAY 1966