Concert Review: Prophets and Losses

The Collegiate Chorale travels The Road of Promise.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Wholly Moses: Mark Delevan in The Road of Promise at Carnegie Hall.
Photo by Erin Baiano © 2015 The Collegiate Chorale.

The Nazi persecution of Jewish composers and musicians remains a permanent blood-stain on the history of 20th century art music. On Thursday night, the Collegiate Chorale presented Kurt Weill's The Road of Promise to close out their season at Carnegie Hall. This is a new condensed concert version of Weill's little heard magnum opus Der Weg der Verbeissing (presented originally as The Eternal Road), a massive opera-oratorio written as a vehement protest against the encroaching darkness of Hitler's Germany.

Opera Review: The Return of Fun City

MSM presents Kurt Weill's Mahagonny.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

 Peter Tinaglia (left) Rachelle Pike and James Ioelu are the founders of Mahagonny.
Photo © 2013 Manhattan School of Music.

On Wednesday night, the brilliant and enthusiastic student artists of the Manhattan School of Music mounted a new production of Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (" Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny") at Borden Auditorium, delivering the show's searing moral message with a performance of high artistic quality. A taut performance from the MSM Orchestra under the baton of Kynan Johns caught the wry humor in Kurt Weill's score, with aural references to American jazz, Mozart and even Wagner's Parsifal shining through the aural fabric.

Concert Review: The Godzilla Concerto

Spring For Music continues, with Marc-Andre Hamelin playing Busoni.
by Paul Pelkonen

If the Busoni concerto were a Japanese movie monster, this is who it would be.
Image of Godzilla (Gojira) © 1954 Toho Studios. Character of Godzilla is the property of Toho Studios.

The Spring For Music festival reached its midway point on Wednesday night at Carnegie Hall. Since the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra travelled the shortest distance to participate in this week of modern music, it was fitting that they chose the toughest program on the schedule: Nocturnal by Edgar Varese, Kurt Weill's obscure Symphony No. 1 (Berliner), and Ferruccio Busoni's gigantic Piano Concerto. The concert was music director Jacques Lacombe's Carnegie Hall debut

Among German composers of the early 20th century, Busoni (a German, despite the Italian name) is looked at as something of an evolutionary dead end, with few followers of his footsteps or much interest in his difficult ideas of a new musical language. With this concert, Mr. Lacombe sought to disprove that thesis: programming the Concerto with works by his students Kurt Weill and Edgar Varèse, composers who took very different musical paths.

Opera Review: The New Cruelty

Berliner Ensemble present Threepenny Opera at BAM.

Swinging London: Macheath (Stefan Kurt, center)
about to be hanged in Act III of Threepenny Opera. 
Photo by Leslie Leslie-Spinks © 2011 Brooklyn Academy of Music.

It is entirely appropriate that this year's NextWave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music chose to mount the acerbic Three- penny Opera (in a production by the Berliner Ensemble and Robert Wilson) during the Occupy Wall Street protests. Coincidence, but entirely appropriate.

Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Jazz-Oper is well known in this country as the source of "Mack the Knife", a jazz standard and a pop hit for Bobby Darin in 1959. In this production, using the original German text and the bare-bones vision of director Robert Wilson, Threepenny regains its sharp teeth. Brecht's bitter commentary about man's inhumanity was especially resonant last night--the audience roared approval at that line about bankers being worse than murderers.

Mr. Wilson's staging emphasizes Brecht's "theater of alienation." His production removed most of the sets, trappings and even props from the action, forcing the listener to focus on the text. The effect: this sordid tale of London's back alleys (based on The Beggar's Opera by British composer John Gay) becomes a strange, alien ritual, conducted by just-landed extraterrestrials with the rogue Macheath as the sacrificial victim.

Concert Review: Knickerbocker is a Slam Dunk

Broadway stars light up a Kurt Weill rarity.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Arrival of Peter Stuyvesant at New Amsterdam. 
From Our Country by Benson J. Lossing. Pub. Johnson & Bailey, © 1895.

As the snow battered New York on Wednesday night, the Collegiate Chorale warmed Alice Tully Hall with the second of two performances of Kurt Weill's 1938 musical, Knickerbocker Holiday.