Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill (1900–1950) was a German-born American composer for the stage, known for blending popular idioms with serious craft so that theatre music could speak to a wide public.
He held the ideal of music that served a socially useful purpose, and he wrote for the concert hall as well as the theatre, including works on Jewish themes.
His best-known stage work is The Threepenny Opera, which includes the ballad Mack the Knife. After fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933 he settled in New York, where he made a substantial contribution to American musical theatre through works such as Lady in the Dark and Street Scene. He remained able to assimilate popular song without intellectual or technical compromise, bringing serious theatre music down to earth and elevating cabaret into a more refined form.
Compositions by Kurt Weill appear on
Jan Friedl sings Brecht
Jan Friedl and pianist James Voss present Bertolt Brecht theatre songs with music by Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau, among the sharpest of the twentieth century.
A Classic Case of Love
Soprano Helen Noonan and guitarist Peter Constant present an intimate programme of love songs spanning centuries, from folk and early music to Schubert, Satie, Villa-Lobos and the twentieth-century stage and songbook.