VOLUME 35 NUMBER 1 Kurt Weill Newsletter SPRING 2017 FEATURES Love Life Resurrected Reviews of Festivals in Los Angeles and Dessau IN THIS ISSUE VOLUME 35 Kurt Weill Newsletter NUMBER 1 2 Correction SPRING 2017 3 Editor’s Note New Works Available for Licensing © 2017 Kurt Weill Foundation for Music ISSN 0899-6407 Celebrating Walt Whitman at 200 7 East 20th Street tel (212) 505-5240 New York, NY 10003-1106 fax (212) 353-9663 FEATURE [email protected] [email protected] Love Life Resurrected Published twice a year, the Kurt Weill Newsletter features articles and reviews 4 Scene and Song List (books, performances, recordings) that center on Kurt Weill but take a broader 5 The Process look at issues of twentieth-century music and theater. With a print run of 5,000 6 The Artists copies, the Newsletter is distributed worldwide. Subscriptions are free. The editor 7 Love Life and Its Discontents welcomes the submission of articles, reviews, and news items for consideration. Joel Galand A variety of opinions are expressed in the Newsletter; they do not necessarily 8 Opening-Night Reviews from 1948 represent the publisher’s official viewpoint. Letters to the editor are welcome. Joel Galand on Love Life Today Staff 9 New Edition—New Beginning Dave Stein, Editor James Holmes Elizabeth Blaufox, Associate Editor 10 An Interview wih Rüdiger Bering Veronica Chaffin, Production Natasha Nelson, Editorial Assistant; Production and Circulation REVIEWS Kurt Weill Foundation Officers Recording Kim H. Kowalke, President and CEO 11 The Road of Promise Ed Harsh, Chair of the Board of Trustees Giselher Schubert Philip Getter, Executive Vice Chair Guy Stern, Vice Chair Performances Susan Feder, Secretary 12 “Lift Every Voice” Festival Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Trustees: André Bishop, Theodore S. Chapin, Victoria Clark, Joanne Hubbard David Farneth Cossa, Corey Field, James Holmes, Welz Kauffman, Tazewell Thompson Trustees Emeriti: Milton Coleman, Paul Epstein, Walter Hinderer, Harold Prince 15 25th Kurt Weill Fest Dessau Rebecca Schmid Honorary Trustees: James Conlon, Stephen E. Davis, Teresa Stratas 17 Love for Sale, etc. Websites Social Media Soho Playhouse William V. Madison http://www.kwf.org facebook.com/KurtWeillFoundation http://www.threepennyopera.org twitter.com/KurtWeillFndn 18 LoveMusik http://www.marc-blitzstein.org youtube.com/KurtWeillFoundation Oper Leipzig Jürgen Schebera NEWS CORRECTION 19 Wide World of Weill While I was pleased, as the author of the first Marc Blitzstein biography (Mark the Music: The Life and Work of Marc Blitzstein, 21 Lenya Story: Ein Liebeslied St. Martin’s, 1989), to read David Möschler’s review of the Air- borne Symphony in San Francisco [Fall 2016], he is mistaken in 22 Twentieth Annual Lotte Lenya Competition saying (twice) that this was the West Coast premiere of the work. The Seattle Men’s Chorus performed Airborne on 30 March 1991. I happen to know because I gave the pre-concert talk about the Cover photo: The first book scene, or sketch, set in Mayville in composer and the work. 1791, from the original production of Love Life on Broadway, 1948. Photo: Vandamm Eric A. Gordon Los Angeles 2 Kurt Weill Newsletter Volume 35, Number 1 EDITOR’S NOTE TheNewsletter has not considered the groundbreaking Broadway We also offer comprehensive coverage of two Weill festivals, show Love Life in many years, but the time, as Lotte Lenya might “Lift Every Voice” in Los Angeles and the 25th Kurt Weill Fest have said, is ripe. Professor Joel Galand, who previously prepared in Dessau, along with reviews of two premieres: a recording of The Firebrand of Florence for the Kurt Weill Edition, has moved The Road of Promise and the first performance in Europe of Love- on to Love Life, and that edition will soon be ready for its close- Musik. Finally, an interview with Austrian singer-actress Sona up. The first production to make use of Galand’s work will be the MacDonald, now starring in Lenya Story: Ein Liebeslied in Vien- German stage premiere, scheduled to open 9 December 2017 in na, graces our news section, just before an account on the finals Freiburg. The production will serve as a pre-publication test for of the twentieth annual Lotte Lenya Competition and reports on the score and instrumental parts. Galand shares a small part of the successes of previous winners. his wealth of knowledge of Love Life in this issue. Dave Stein New Works Available for Licensing original instrumentation: flute/piccolo, bassoon, piano, percus- sion, two violins, viola, cello, and double bass. • Chansons des quais/Songs of the Waterfront: Cycle for soprano, male quartet, and chamber ensemble, compiled and • In 2014, composer Gene Pritsker produced a symphonic orch- edited by Kim H. Kowalke from music by Kurt Weill intended estration of Weill’s Johnny Johnson, which was heard first in a for Marie Galante, with lyrics by Jacques Deval. New material concert performance at the Kurt Weill Fest in 2015 (and again in includes a reconstruction of the “Introduction” from fragmentary 2017). Next up for Pritsker will be an orchestral suite (no vocals), sources by HK Gruber, as well as new vocal arrangements and tentatively scheduled for performance in fall 2017 by the MDR- the sequencing of songs and interludes without reference to the Sinfonieorchester and spring 2018 by the orchestra of Berlin’s original stage work. It was performed for the first time at the Komische Oper, both times under the direction of Kristjan Järvi. Kurt Weill Fest Dessau, 12 March 2017 (see review on p. 15) with soprano Ute Gfrerer, ensemble amarcord, and Ensemble Modern under HK Gruber. A month later they went into the studio Celebrating Walt Whitman at 200 and recorded it with some editorial modifications. The work is approximately 30 minutes in duration and requires five singers The work of Walt Whitman (1819– (soprano soloist and TTBB quartet) and seventeen players. 1892) continues to resonate with Chansons des quais is available for licensing from European readers around the world 125 American Music and Heugel. years after his death. Both Weill and Blitzstein found in his poetry • Song-Suite for Violin and Orchestra: Paul Bateman has a vehicle for expressing their own arranged six favorite Weill songs into a sizzling concert piece strong personal convictions; the two for solo violin and ensemble. The accompaniment comes in hundredth anniversary of Whitman’s two versions: chamber ensemble and full symphonic orchestra. birth provides incentive to perform Violinist Daniel Hope premiered the chamber version to great their settings. acclaim during last winter’s “Lift Every Voice” festival in Los Weill composed his first Whitman song in response to the Angeles (see review on p. 12); he is scheduled to perform the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In part an assertion of Weill’s American symphonic version again in Essen, May 2018. To date, Hope identity, the songs address the domestic realities of war, the cost has recorded two of Bateman’s arrangements on separate discs: of freedom, and the true meaning of patriotism and liberty. “Speak Low” on Escape to Paradise and “September Song” on He composed four in all between 1941 and 1947; the songs are this year’s For Seasons (both on Deutsche Grammophon). The available with piano or orchestral accompaniment and in high complete work, in both orchestrations, is available for rental from and low keys. European American Music. Street Scene, Weill’s collaboration with Elmer Rice and Langston Hughes, evokes Whitman in its language and themes; Three new instrumental suites are in development, to be unveiled the opera is their collective tribute to the great poet. In the cli- in the near future: mactic Act I finale, two young lovers quote Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” and recall it during the fi- • Much Ado about Love takes its name from the working title of Weill’s “smash flop” Broadway operetta The Firebrand of Florence. nale of the opera. The sumptuous score contains several dances—a Sarabande, a Marc Blitzstein’s twelve settings for voice and piano include Gigue, a Tarantella, a Waltz—now brought together as a suite us- several of Whitman’s more erotically charged poems, shining ing Weill’s own orchestrations. The work, conceived and edited new light on the modern understanding of Whitman’s sexuality. by Kim H. Kowalke and John Baxindine, will see its American Blitzstein, gay himself, handled Whitman’s texts with boldness premiere at the Brevard Festival on 25 June 2017; performance and sensitivity. Today, these songs find new relevance in light of materials may be rented from Josef Weinberger in London. a heightened awareness of LGBT rights. Blitzstein’s prescience also makes itself felt in choices of other poems that deal with race relations and social justice. Composed between 1925 and 1928, • Kleine Zaubernachtmusik, a 21-minute concert suite from Zaubernacht, conceived and edited by Baxindine, utilizes Weill’s the songs may be performed as a cycle or individually. Volume 35, Number 1 Kurt Weill Newsletter 3 FEATURE Weill’s most mysterious, and possibly most influential, Broadway show will soon become much less mysterious, as two great events in the life of Love Life draw nearer. One is the first publication of the score and script, prepared by Joel Galand as part of the Kurt Weill Edition; the other is the forthcoming German stage premiere, spearheaded by the new Dramaturg at Theater Freiburg, Rüdiger Bering. Galand’s vast knowledge of the genesis and development of Love Life as it made its way to Broadway informs the historical portion of this feature, and he also offers some suggestions for understanding this early example of the concept musical. James Holmes, Weill conductor extraordinaire, has provided an essay on Love Life and the critical edition, which he is already studying as he prepares to conduct the Freiburg production.