Weill - The Seven Deadly Sins & other works
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Label: LSO Live
Cat No: LSO0880
Format: Hybrid SACD
Number of Discs: 1
Release Date: 17th January 2025
Contents
Works
Die sieben Todsunden (The Seven Deadly Sins)Kleine Dreigroschenmusik
Street Scene
» Lonely House
Vom Tod im Wald, op.23Walt Whitman Songs (4)
» no.1 Beat! Beat! Drums!
» no.4 Dirge for two veterans
Artists
Magdalena Kozena (mezzo-soprano)Andrew Staples (tenor)
Alessandro Fisher (tenor)
Ross Ramgobin (baritone)
Florian Boesch (bass-baritone)
London Symphony Orchestra
Conductor
Simon RattleWorks
Die sieben Todsunden (The Seven Deadly Sins)Kleine Dreigroschenmusik
Street Scene
» Lonely House
Vom Tod im Wald, op.23Walt Whitman Songs (4)
» no.1 Beat! Beat! Drums!
» no.4 Dirge for two veterans
Artists
Magdalena Kozena (mezzo-soprano)Andrew Staples (tenor)
Alessandro Fisher (tenor)
Ross Ramgobin (baritone)
Florian Boesch (bass-baritone)
London Symphony Orchestra
Conductor
Simon RattleAbout
A stinging critique of capitalist society, The Seven Deadly Sins brings into sharp focus the perpetual battle between money and morals.
Created by the trail-blazing duo of the Weimer Republic, Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht, the satirical ballet chanté The Seven Deadly Sins was to be the pair’s final collaboration. Hitler had come to power, and the Jewish Weill and Marxist Brecht had both left Germany in haste.
Weill was to come to terms with capitalist America more readily than Brecht, writing a series of popular musicals for Broadway with other collaborators. But, in The Seven Deadly Sins, Brecht’s pen is still dripping with venom as he excoriates the continent’s sleazy, materialistic values, the biblical septet of vices here given a contemporary twist.
The story tells of daughter Anna (Magdalena Ko˛enį), who is sent away from her family, tasked with bringing back enough money to build a house on the Mississippi River. Through seven years and seven cities – from Memphis and Los Angeles to Philadelphia and San Francisco – Anna encounters the seven deadly sins and is forced to make her choice between what is profitable and what is right.
Sir Simon Rattle, the London Symphony Orchestra and a star-studded line-up of soloists bring this shamelessly entertaining work to life alongside a collection of Weill’s other most memorable works, including Death in the Forest and Little Threepenny Music.
Generously supported by the Jeremy and John Sacher Charitable Trust. Funded in part by The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Inc., New York, NY.
Created by the trail-blazing duo of the Weimer Republic, Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht, the satirical ballet chanté The Seven Deadly Sins was to be the pair’s final collaboration. Hitler had come to power, and the Jewish Weill and Marxist Brecht had both left Germany in haste.
Weill was to come to terms with capitalist America more readily than Brecht, writing a series of popular musicals for Broadway with other collaborators. But, in The Seven Deadly Sins, Brecht’s pen is still dripping with venom as he excoriates the continent’s sleazy, materialistic values, the biblical septet of vices here given a contemporary twist.
The story tells of daughter Anna (Magdalena Ko˛enį), who is sent away from her family, tasked with bringing back enough money to build a house on the Mississippi River. Through seven years and seven cities – from Memphis and Los Angeles to Philadelphia and San Francisco – Anna encounters the seven deadly sins and is forced to make her choice between what is profitable and what is right.
Sir Simon Rattle, the London Symphony Orchestra and a star-studded line-up of soloists bring this shamelessly entertaining work to life alongside a collection of Weill’s other most memorable works, including Death in the Forest and Little Threepenny Music.
Generously supported by the Jeremy and John Sacher Charitable Trust. Funded in part by The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Inc., New York, NY.
Sound/Video
Paused
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1Die sieben Todsünden: 1. Prolog
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2Die sieben Todsünden: 2. Faulheit
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3Die sieben Todsünden: 3. Stolz
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4Die sieben Todsünden: 4. Zorn
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5Die sieben Todsünden: 5. Völlerei
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6Die sieben Todsünden: 6. Unzucht
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7Die sieben Todsünden: 7. Habsucht
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8Die sieben Todsünden: 8. Neid
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9Die sieben Todsünden: 9. Epilog
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10Vom Tod im Wald, op.23
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11Street Scene: Lonely House (Act I)
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12Four Walt Whitman Songs: 1. Beat! Beat! Drums!
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13Four Walt Whitman Songs: 4. Dirge for Two Veterans
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14Kleine Dreigroschenmusik: 1. Ouvertüre
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15Kleine Dreigroschenmusik: 2. Die Moritat von Mackie Messer
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16Kleine Dreigroschenmusik: 3. Anstatt-dass Song
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17Kleine Dreigroschenmusik: 4. Die Ballade vom anganehmen Leben
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18Kleine Dreigroschenmusik: 5. Pollys Lied
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19Kleine Dreigroschenmusik: 6. Tango-Ballade
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20Kleine Dreigroschenmusik: 7. Kanonen-Song
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21Kleine Dreigroschenmusik: 8. Dreigroschen-Finale
Europadisc Review
Although its Paris premiere in June 1933 was greeted largely with incomprehension, Die sieben Todsünden (‘The Seven Deadly Sins’) has since become one of the most performed of Kurt Weill’s works, albeit usually in the concert hall or on record rather than the stage for which it was intended. This ballet chanté (‘sung ballet’) was the last joint project between Weill and his erstwhile collaborator, the radical playwright Bertolt Brecht. The two had fallen out over political matters in 1930, but the Nazis’ seizure of power in 1933 saw both Weill (a Jew) and Brecht (a Marxist) flee Berlin. Finding a temporary haven in Paris, Weill was commissioned to create a project that would combine the talents of his wife, the singer Lotte Lenya, with the dancer Tilly Losch. Weill drafted in Brecht when the originally intended librettist, Jean Cocteau, declined the invitation.
The Seven Deadly Sins charts the story of Anna, daughter of a preachy but indolent Louisiana family, who is sent into the world to make the fortune with which the family can build their dream house. The role of Anna is split between Anna I (Lenya: a practical, level-headed businesswoman) and Anna II (Losch: a passionate idealist), and highlights the hypocrisy of Anna’s family as she travels through seven US cities as an entertainer of various sorts while sending her earnings back home. Bookended by a Prologue and Epilogue, each stage of the journey is matched with one of the church’s ‘deadly sins’. Although for many the celebrated 1950s recording by Lenya herself continues to be a reference point, it transposed Anna’s voice down a fourth to compensate for the singer’s by then dwindling vocal powers. Over 40 years ago, Simon Rattle’s earlier recording (made for EMI) was the first to restore the music to its original 1933 pitch. And he does so again as part of an all-Weill concert at London’s Barbican Hall in April 2022, now released on the LSO Live label.
The role of Anna is taken by mezzo-soprano (and Rattle’s wife) Magdalena Ko˛enį, speaking Anna II’s few verbal contributions, and bringing a wide range of nuance and a palpable musical and emotional commitment to Anna I’s music. This is a performance which reclaims the work from the cabaret-like world of some famous recordings (Lenya’s own, and Ute Lemper’s on Decca) and situates it firmly on the lyric stage, yet thanks to Rattle’s urgent conducting and the pointed playing of the London Symphony Orchestra, there’s no lack of the bite so essential if the work is to drive its message home. Anna’s journey from initial hopefulness through heartbreak to a final weary return home is movingly conveyed by Ko˛enį, while the characterisation of the individual numbers – the almost Mahlerian waltz in ‘Pride’, the ferociously busy tuttis in ‘Greed’, the terrifying interjections of ‘Envy’ – is vividly realised by Rattle and his players.
Anna’s family is sung by an all-male quartet (including a mother sung by the bass voice!), and tenors Andrew Staples and Alessandro Fisher, baritone Ross Ramgobin and bass-baritone Florian Boesch are hugely enjoyable in their frequent moralising contributions. They really come into their own with the barbershop-style a cappella quartet in ‘Gluttony’, where they clearly relish describing in detail the tasty morsels Anna must avoid if she is not to lose her figure and with it her job.
The Seven Deadly Sins is complemented by other vocal works and excerpts from across Weill’s career: ‘Lonely House’ from Street Scene (1947), sung by Staples with glitzy orchestral accompaniment, and two of the Four Walt Whitman Songs bringing home the realities of the American Civil War (1942–47): the harrowing ‘Beat! Beat! Drums!’ with Ramgobin on intense form, and the touching ‘Dirge for Two Veterans’ (father and son, buried in a double grave) sensitively conveyed by Staples. Most extraordinary, however, is the cantata Vom Tod im Wald (‘Death in the Forest’, 1927), to another Brecht text with a US setting. Scored for bass soloist and ten wind players, its Sprechgesang delivery and atonal musical language are the closest Weill came to Schoenberg, and Boesch gives a thoroughly committed performance of this darkly disturbing work with its Expressionist undertones.
The disc closes with the item that opened the 2022 concert: the Kleine Dreigroschenmusik (1929) for wind and percussion taken by Weill from his best-known stage work, The Threepenny Opera. A distant relation of the wind serenades prepared from Classical operas, this suite has a pungent variety, ranging from the imposing Overture, through the snappy ‘Ballad of Mack’ the Knife and ‘Cannon Song’, to the reflectiveness and chamber textures of ‘Polly’s Song’ and the dreamily restrained ‘Tango-Ballade’. The grand closing chorale sets the seal on an absorbing album, with nicely focussed and well-balanced recordings (all the voices are finely captured), attractively packaged with full texts and translations.
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