Kurt Weill - Die Zaubernacht (Arte Ensemble)

Information

Composer: Kurt Weill

• (01-25) Die Zaubernacht, Kinderpantomime in einem Akt, Op. 7

Arte Ensemble
&
Ania Vegry, soprano (2)

Date: 2012
Label: cpo

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Review

Weill was 22, and one of five pupils admitted to Busoni’s master class under the auspices of the Prussian Academy of Arts, when he accepted his first commission, to provide music for a children’s pantomime, Zaubernacht. The scenario, woven around magic and enchantment (which Busoni considered the proper sphere of musical theater) drew from Weill an abundant and melodically generous response, whose 24 numbers strut an astounding compositional resourcefulness fraught with naiveté, charm, mystery, rumbustious high spirits, and infinite cunning. The surefire tunes, the “hit” numbers, of Die Dreigroschenoper and Happy End , though lurking just over the horizon, are in abeyance, and would, in any case, have been inappropriate for Zaubernacht —with one exception. During the winter of 1920–21, when Weill came to Berlin to begin his studies with Busoni, he jotted a suave foxtrot introducing a vocal send-up of an ad for Algi, a popular toiletry. Thanks to research and performance panache by the incomparable H. K. Gruber, with the Ensemble Modern, the Slow Fox and Algi-Song , with its insidiously memorable refrain, were drawn from obscurity to droll life in 1990 on the indispensable Largo 5114, which featured a number of other Weill rarities. The Algi-Song ’s theme, with its ingratiating lilt, becomes a central motif in Zaubernacht , appearing in several beguiling guises. If Zaubernacht has not joined the Weill canon, it’s owing to its survival as a not quite complete piano score.

Prefacing the album’s booklet essay, a note puts the matter succinctly: “The present compact disc is the recording premiere of Kurt Weill’s Zaubernacht . The only previous recording of the work (released as a compact disc in 2002) used British arranger Meirion Bowen’s reconstruction of the score from a surviving piano sketch. In 2006 Weill’s original instrumentation unexpectedly resurfaced.” Notes by Elmar Juchem, who identified Weill’s newly discovered manuscript and saw it through the press, tell a gripping story which we’ll leave for your delectation, for, without a doubt, if you’ve read thus far you’ll want this. Weill aficionados who picked up the Bowen arrangement, with Celso Antunes leading the Ensemble Contrasts Köln (Capriccio 67011), can now make the particularly invidious comparisons this echt Weill production allows, marking the great gulf fixed between informed expertise and genius. Bowen’s arrangement, for which we once were grateful, fades into dull, would-be clever opacity in the radiance of Weill’s scintillant—often coruscating—aural sorcery. Nor is Weill’s instrumentation a series of clever audacities—though surprises and audacities abound—but looms as the inevitable realization of the musical material, which discloses an expressive piquancy rarely suggested chez Bowen. Thus, CPO’s curt assertion that this is the work’s “recording premiere” is entirely accurate, for one simply has not heard Zaubernacht until one has heard this. Where Antunes & the Contrasts band often seemed reticent or generic, the Arte Ensemble spirits up the music with compelling pizzazz. In the Fairy’s Song, the single vocal, after Ania Vegry’s bright, enticing soprano, Ingrid Schmithüsen’s for Antunes seems hooty and distressing. CPO’s aural spin is upfront, gutsy, and sparklingly detailed. Highest recommendation.

-- Adrian Corleonis, FANFARE

More reviews:
BBC Music Magazine  PERFORMANCE: **** / RECORDING: *****
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2013/June13/Weill_Zaubernacht_7777672.htm
https://www.amazon.com/Zaubernacht-Weill/dp/B00BEMV10Q

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Kurt Weill (March 2, 1900 – April 3, 1950) was a German composer, who became a United States citizen in 1943. Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht, such as Weill's best-known work The Threepenny Opera, which included the ballad "Mack the Knife". Weill's music was admired by Berg, Zemlinsky, Milhaud and Stravinsky, but was also criticised Schoenberg and Webern. Sixty years after his death, Weill's music continues to be performed both in popular and classical contexts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Weill

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At the Stuttgart Music Festival 2010, the Arte Ensemble, on behalf of the Stuttgart Bach Academy, together with the Nina Kurzeja Dance Theater, presented the German performance of the first stage work by composer Kurt Weill, the children pantomime "Die Zaubernacht" ("The Magical Night"). The score, which was lost almost 90 years ago, was presented to the German public at the Stuttgart Theater House with three performances for the first time since its premiere in 1922.
http://www.arte-ensemble.de/

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