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Weill - Violin Concerto, Symphony no.2

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Label: Somm

Cat No: SOMMCD280

Barcode: 0748871328020

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Orchestral

Release Date: 15th July 2022

Works

Weill, Kurt

Symphony no.2 'Symphonic Fantasy'
Violin Concerto, op.12

Artists

Tomas Kocsis (violin)
Ulster Orchestra

Conductor

Jac van Steen

Works

Weill, Kurt

Symphony no.2 'Symphonic Fantasy'
Violin Concerto, op.12

Artists

Tomas Kocsis (violin)
Ulster Orchestra

Conductor

Jac van Steen

About

SOMM RECORDINGS celebrates the mastery of a 20th-century original with superb new recordings of Kurt Weill’s Violin Concerto and Second Symphony by Tomás Kocsis and the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Jac van Steen.

Although Weill found fame in theatre-focused collaborations with Bertolt Brecht that produced the era-defining The Threepenny Opera, the onetime pupil of Ferruccio Busoni straddled the worlds of music-theatre, jazz and the concert hall with music of daring aplomb and dazzling achievement.

Dedicated to Joseph Szigeti, his five-movement Violin Concerto of 1924 also pays tribute to the ailing Busoni and sports discernible allusions to Stravinsky, Mahler and the potent popular music of Weimar Berlin’s cabaret clubs. A unique blend, as Robert Matthew-Walker comments in his authoritative booklet notes: “No comparable work had appeared before from any composer”.

Composed a decade later, the Second Symphony was premiered by Bruno Walter and the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. In three movements, “Weill’s contrapuntal mastery and his equally unselfconscious command of instrumentation present us with genuinely symphonic music, such as a 20th-century Haydn would have appreciated and enjoyed”.

Jac van Steen’s previous SOMM releases include acclaimed recordings of Mozart piano concertos with Peter Donohoe, Valerie Tryon and Mishka Rushdie Momen (SOMMCD278-2), The Deeper the Blue, an intriguing exploration of colour and timbre in music featuring Vaughan Williams, Ravel, Dutilleux and Kenneth Hesketh (SOMMCD275), and the International Classical Music Awards-nominated pairing of concertos by Albéniz and Mignone with Clélia Iruzun (SOMMCD265).

The Ulster Orchestra has released world premiere recordings of Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia for Piano and Orchestra and two piano concertos by William Matthias with pianist Mark Bebbington (SOMMCD246).

Sound/Video

Paused

1

Symphony No. 2: I. Sostenuto - Allegro molto
2

Symphony No. 2: II. Largo
3

Symphony No. 2: III. Allegro vivace
4

Violin Concerto, Op. 12: I. Andante con moto
5

Violin Concerto, Op. 12: IIa. Notturno; Allegro un poco tenuto
6

Violin Concerto, Op. 12: IIb. Cadenza; Moderato
7

Violin Concerto, Op. 12: IIc. Serenata; Allegretto
8

Violin Concerto, Op. 12: III. Allegro molto, un poco agitato

Europadisc Review

Just a couple of months after an acclaimed recording of Kurt Weill’s Second Symphony by the Rotterdam Philharmonic under Lahav Shani on Warner Classics, along comes another, this time from the Ulster Orchestra and their principal guest conductor Jac van Steen from Somm Recordings. While Shani coupled the Symphony with Shostakovich’s Fifth, Steen pairs it with Weill’s own Violin Concerto, with the Ulster Orchestra’s leader, Tamás Kocsis, as soloist – making a particularly attractive coupling of Weill’s two best-known works for the concert hall.

Although Weill is best known for his music theatre collaborations with Bertolt Brecht, notably The Threepenny Opera and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, his early career – during which he studied with Humperdinck and, most crucially, Busoni – included notable forays into concert repertoire. The Second Symphony (originally titled ‘Symphonic Fantasy’) was composed in 1933-34, placing it between the ‘winter’s tale’ Der Silbersee and the choral ballet The Seven Deadly Sins. Following Hitler’s rise to power in early 1933, Weill fled Nazi Germany for Paris, and the Symphony is the first work of his long exile as well as his last orchestral concert work. It was premiered in Amsterdam in 1934 by the Concertgebouw Orchestra under no less a figure than Bruno Walter, who described it as having a ‘nocturnal, uncanny, mysterious atmosphere’ and suggested to Weill the title ‘Three Night Scenes’ which Weill initially adopted.

In retrospect, one can also sense an unmistakable note of menace, heightened by the martial dotted figuration that peppers the first two movements, as well as a distinctive wind-only goose-step parody halfway through the third and final movement which, were it not for the larger than usual scoring, could have come straight out of one of Weill’s stage works. Steen directs a sensitively shaped performance that finds unexpected beauty in what can come across as a hard-nosed, sardonic score. Although Shani and his Rotterdam players find an extra degree of bite, depth and urgency, particularly in the Symphony’s ominous slow introduction, this new Somm account is the more sympathetic reading, with an admirably natural balance caught by producer David Byers and engineer Ben Connellan in Belfast’s Ulster Hall. The all-important woodwind and brass contingent – notably the solo trumpet in the first movement and solo trombone in the central Largo – is outstanding, well supported by some warm string playing.

Ten years before the Second Symphony, Weill composed his only concertante work, the Concerto for violin, wind, percussion and double basses – a similar scoring to Stravinsky’s contemporaneous Piano Concerto. Like the Stravinsky concerto, Weill’s Violin Concerto was premiered in Paris (Stravinsky in 1924, Weill in 1925), with the Orchestre de Concerts Straram under Walther Straram, and the solo part taken by not the originally intended Joseph Szigeti but Marcel Darrieux, who had recently premiered Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto. Weill’s Concerto was composed at the culmination of his studies with his revered teacher Busoni, who died just three weeks after the work’s completion. There’s a palpable Busonian atmosphere, not least in the tarantella-like finale and a generally Italianate, occasionally harlequinesque demeanour, but also nods towards the expressionism of Hindemith – another important influence on the young composer’s development.

Cast, like the Symphony, in three movements, with the central slow movement further divided into three parts (Notturno, Cadenza and Serenata), the Concerto unmistakably inhabits the world of the 1920s, retreating from the overblown textures of neo-Romanticism while referencing popular music as well as Mahler’s more capricious nocturnal moods. Tamás Kocsis proves to be an excellent soloist (his repertoire also includes the Berg Violin Concerto – Berg being the only member of the Second Viennese School who was sympathetic to Weill’s particular form of neoclassical ‘new objectivity’); he tosses off the technically demanding solo part – including the formidable central Cadenza – with aplomb and a keen sense of involvement, and is partnered splendidly by his colleagues, notably the wry xylophone solo in the Notturno. There’s lots of mercurial, quickfire figuration for both soloist and orchestra, and Steen expertly steers his players through the kaleidoscope of textures.

As the only currently available coupling of these two works in the catalogue, this disc makes an excellent recommendation for Weill enthusiasts, and even if there were other identical competitors it would comfortably hold its own. It should be particularly attractive for those who respond less readily to Weill’s theatre works, showing another side to one of the most notable younger composers in early 20th-century music.