Songs from a Hotel Bedroom, Linbury Studio | reviews, news & interviews
Songs from a Hotel Bedroom, Linbury Studio
Songs from a Hotel Bedroom, Linbury Studio
Hit-and-miss Kurt Weill compilation revisits some great songs
Friday, 05 November 2010
Frances Ruffelle and Nigel Richards wax lyrical with Weill
Where has this idea come from that Kurt Weill somehow lost his edge or, worse yet, sold out when he headed Stateside? Have the people who perpetrate this nonsense actually heard the Broadway shows? The diversity of subject matter, the individuality of the melodic style, the willingness to be easily assimilated and to embrace and to challenge a tradition that was growing in ambition and sophistication – this was the American Weill. As his wife Lotte Lenya put it: there were never two Weills – “only one, or possibly a thousand”.
Where has this idea come from that Kurt Weill somehow lost his edge or, worse yet, sold out when he headed Stateside? Have the people who perpetrate this nonsense actually heard the Broadway shows? The diversity of subject matter, the individuality of the melodic style, the willingness to be easily assimilated and to embrace and to challenge a tradition that was growing in ambition and sophistication – this was the American Weill. As his wife Lotte Lenya put it: there were never two Weills – “only one, or possibly a thousand”.
The emotional tug of this all-new drama lends one or two of these songs an element of sentimentality that they didn’t previously display
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