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The Music of Kurt Weill Revisits the Salzburg Festival

Jul. 01, 2015

The Music of Kurt Weill Revisits the Salzburg Festival

The Salzburg Festival, one of the world’s best-known music festivals, features several major performances of Kurt Weill’s music this summer and marks the first time since 1998 that one of his stage works is presented there. This year’s Festival offers both the original version of Weill’s The Threepenny Opera as well as a new, experimental version, reorchestrated by Martin Lowe.

On August 15, HK Gruber conducts the Ensemble Modern and a cast that includes Max Raabe (Macheath), Ute Gfrerer (Polly), Winnie Böwe (Lucy), and Gruber himself (Peachum) in a full concert performance of The Threepenny Opera. Gruber performs the work regularly throughout Europe with the Ensemble Modern, and their 1999 recording, from which several singers also appear in the Salzburg cast, is essential listening.

The Threepenny Opera is also to be seen on stage in a fascinating new orchestration by Tony, Grammy, and Olivier Award-winning composer and director Martin Lowe. The new version has been authorized by Weill's publisher as a unique experiment licensed for performance at the Festival under the title “Mack the Knife—A Salzburg Threepenny Opera.” Festival director Sven-Eric Bechtolf remarks:

By adapting the immortal melodies of this wonderful composer afresh, we will attempt to transport the sonic environment of his remarkable score from the dance band idioms of the Twenties of the last century to the sonorities of the second decade of our own. 

Eight performances are scheduled between August 11 and August 27. Festival patrons may also hear Weill on August 22, when soprano Angela Denoke gives a recital of songs by Weill and his contemporaries with pianist Tal Balshai, Norbert Nagel on wind instruments, and cellist Tim Park.

For more information on the Salzburg Festival performances, visit salzburgerfestspiele.at.

Details on Kurt Weill can be found at www.kwf.org. 

Kurt Weill
The Threepenny Opera (1928)
play with music after John Gay's The Beggar's Opera; in three acts
German translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann
adaptation and lyrics by Bertolt Brecht
2S, 2Mz, T, Bar, B-Bar and speaking roles
asax(fl, cl, bsax).tsax(ssax, bsn, bcl)-tpt.tbn(db)-banjo(vc, gtr, Hawaiian gtr, mandolin, bandoneon)-timp/perc (tpt 2)-harm (cel, pno)
full evening

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