Kurt Weill - 1900 - 1950 - Berliner Requiem

The focus of this album falls on the "Berliner Requiem" of 1928, together with two a capella choral pieces, "Legende vom toten Soldaten" and "Zu Potsdam unter den Eichen", which fall in the vicinity of the "Requiem". The four songs to texts by Walt Whitman give an impression - not merely in musical terms - of the way the "American" Weill grappled with the subject of war and death, this time form the perspecitve of one who "stayed at home" and helplessly confronted the Second World War. The album opens with the large-scale "Recordare", a religious view of the same subject, and is counter-balanced by the concluding "Kiddush". The latter work is the only piece on this album which does not directly deal with the problems of war and peace, but its meditative and religious stance can be taken as symbolic of peace.

The vocal works on this live recording cover a period of twenty-four years. During this time not only the circumstances of Weill´s life but his very musical language changed whith almost unimaginable radicality. At first an "avant-garde" composer in the early 1920s, a spiritual confrère of Schoenberg and Hindemith, Weill underwent an simplification and popularization in his musical style which, in scale, is probalby unique in the history of music.

Tracklist:
1. Recordare, Op. 11 (1923)
2. Legende vom toten Soldaten (1929)
3. Zu Potsdam unter den Eichen (1928)
Berliner Requiem (1928):
5. Ballade vom ertrunken Mädchen
6. Marterl (Grabschrift)
7. Erster Bericht über den unbekannten Soldaten unter dem Triumphbogen
8. Zweiter Bericht uber den unbekannten Soldaten unter dem Triumphbogen
9. Grosser Dankchoral

Four Walt Whitman Songs (1942/47):
10. Oh Captain! My Captain!
11. Beat! Beat! Drums!
12. Dirge for two veterans
13. Come up from the feilds, father
14. Kiddush (1946)


Recorded at Robert-Schumann-Saal, Düsseldorf, March, 24, 1990, with Jürgen Wagner (tenord), Wolfgang Holzmair (baritone) and the Robert-Schumann-Kammerorchester conducted by Harmut Schmidt (1 - 9) and Marc-Andreas Schlingensiepen (10 - 14).

Kurt Weill - Berliner Requiem
(192 kbps, front cover included)