LENYA Weill: The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1956) - PACO055

"Mr. Shawe-Taylor, I feel sure, will have another view: let me brave Quarterly censure, and declare that I find Mahagonny a deeply fascinating and impressive work. I don't know why, exactly. You say: cheap little popular tunes. I reply: tunes—and more than tunes, musical complexes—that strike deep, that make one think and feel, and quote Stuckenschmidt in defence: "Melodies and poisonously iridiscent sounds one can never forget". You say: You can't want to hear it as often as you do a Verdi opera. I reply: Well, no, but this opera ties into life around me today, relates to nonmusical thoughts and experiences, as those patriotic pages in Verdi tied into the lives of 19th-century Italians. The local colour, certainly, is Berlin and the Twenties, but the themes—capitalist society, anarchy, too complicated to go into here—are live ones. There are so many ways to approach Mahagonny that I can just give a pointer or two, and let you discover the work for yourself.

One level is simply the pop-tune one, the quality which took "Mack the Knife" (from the other Brecht-Weill opera) into the Top Ten, and could surely do the same for the Alabama Song, and "Denn wie man sich bettet, so Iiegt man" and "Ach, bedenken sic, Herr Jakob Schmidt". Another, the fiendishly deft musical craftmanship of this Busoni pupil: look at the Storm Chorus, or the grimly off-centre reworking of the Magic Flute chorale, or the lyrical counterpoint of the Stork Duet. Weill's plain, cunning harmonies anticipate The Rake's Progress; his ostinatos anticipate Carl Orff's, and are far less crude. Another approach is through Brecht's libretto, both in the long run and in some of the "lyrics" (the word is apt). In Mahagonny there is parody, satire, tenderness, drama: and all done with absolute sureness of touch and certainty of effect. One criticism—and that applies only because it is a recording: without the stage to help, we may get musically bogged down in the chorale and processions of the final scene.

Mahagonny, the City of Nets, is founded by a tradam and two cronies. as a place where anything goes. Jenny and her colleagues soon move in. then Jimmy and his lumberjack companions from Alaska, with money to spend. The love between Jenny and Jimmy, delicately compounded of cash and sentiment, runs throughout the work. At the end of Act I a hurricane threatens the city with total destruction. Dramatic curtain. But miraculously it misses the place: Act 2 is a set of scenes illustrating Gluttony, Love, Boxing and Drinking, each carried on without restraint. But Jimmy can't pay for his drinks: Act 3 is his trial and sentence: two days for indirect murder; four years for "seduction, by means of money"; and for not paying for his whiskey, death. Jim is strapped in the electric chair; and there is a grand finale with processions, the sense of which, I must own, I have not yet got quite clear.

In one scene of Mahagonny, "A Maiden's Prayer" is strummed out on the pub piano, and Jake murmurs softly, "Das ist die ewige Kunst". I suppose I am like Jake when a Weill piece like Lost in the Stars, which reason and training tell me to reject as a sentimental tear-jerker, insists on jerking tears all the same. But Weill's appeal is powerful, not lightly to be rejected or resisted. As for Mahagonny—I can only repeat, hear it for yourself. It is sung in German, but there is a libretto and translation with the set: also an introduction by Lotte Lenya, an essay by Stuckenschmidt, some fascinating photographs of the original performances (the Little Mahagonny at Baden Baden in 1927, the premiere in Leipzig in 1930, the famous run in the Berlin Kurfürstendammtheater in 1931), and some of Caspar Neher's brilliant designs.

This is a well-prepared Hamburg studio performance. Lotte Lenya has lost none of the allure and exciting quality for which she is famous; but now she sings most of the music an octave lower than she did thirty years ago—and so the octaves of the love-duet have become unisons—curious effect, to say the least! She is very close to the microphone, much closer than the others: when she tries to distract Jim from his wildness as the hurricane approaches, her murmur of "Come outside with me and make love" sounds seductively in one's very ear. She is a brilliant diseuse, and a vivid personality. It is a pity, though, that the Alabama Song should have been so much simplified; in its "corporate" form, with Jenny's voice haloed by those of her friends, it sounds far more magical. Heinz Sauerbaum is a pretty good Jim Mahoney (Johann Ackermann in the first version), though he catches the microphone badly on side 5. Otherwise the recording is well managed on the whole; some little adjustments are needed from time to time, as if the results of different sessions had not been perfectly matched.

The zither is enticingly played, and Fritz Gol lnitz brings Patzak-1 ike Viennoiserie to his waltz "Jetzt hab' ich gegessen zwei Kälber". Peter Markwort is outstanding; Gisela Litz, an intelligent and accomplished artist, does well as Widow Begbick. In fact the cast is strong throughout."

- Gramophone review, November 1960