Christian Thielemann presents three contrasting musical worlds during our online festival “The Golden Twenties”: that of Paul Hindemith, who brilliantly combined his music with jazz elements in his parodistic opera Neues vom Tage (News of the Day), that of Ferruccio Busoni, the bridge builder between Romanticism and Modernism, and the musical world of Richard Strauss, who cultivated a rich late Romantic musical language in his orchestral songs and the cycle Die Tageszeiten (The Times of Day).
Kurt Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny confronts us with the darker side of humanity and society. Written at the end of the 1920s, Weill wanted to create a work with this opera “that will deal with the utterly different expressions of life in our time in an appropriate form”. Thomas Søndergård, who is making his Berliner Philharmoniker debut, conducts compositions by Prokofiev and Sibelius in addition to the suite from the opera.
Our playlist shows how unconventional composition was in the 1920s: Kurt Weill wrote a song about the oil industry, Arnold Schoenberg wrote the music for a film that didn't even exist, and Paul Hindemith put to paper what the overture to The Flying Dutchman might sound like in a performance by a bad spa band in the early morning. Pieces by Richard Strauss, Alban Berg and Ferruccio Busoni complete this colourful selection for the online festival “The Golden Twenties”.
A film that was intended to shock and shake up its viewers: Kuhle Wampe (Empty Stomach) from 1932 depicts the bitter fate of a working-class family during the Great Depression. The music is by Hanns Eisler, who compiled a concert suite with a “best of” selection from the film. Music that was in step with the times: kinetic, exciting, stirring. Kurt Weill’s name is associated first and foremost with the Threepenny Opera. He worked in many different genres, however, as his Violin Concerto and Second Symphony demonstrate.
Accompanied by historical film footage and the music of Kurt Weill, actress Dagmar Manzel tells the story of Berlin in the 1920s: a city that was characterised in equal measure by cultural splendour and economic misery, political instability and joie de vivre, light music and cutting-edge art. Berlin im Licht is the title of a festival that in 1928 turned night into day in the capital. Weill and Bertolt Brecht wrote the catchy tune of the same name.
Kirill Petrenko brings the 1920s to life again with an early work by Kurt Weill. The influence of Liszt, Mahler and Strauss on Weill can be heard in his rarely performed Symphony in One Movement. The music is captivating, brash and brilliant, but also features delicate, chamber music-like passages. We also hear Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio Oedipus rex, composed in 1927 and set in ancient Greece. Its music is crystal-clear neoclassicism – how could it be otherwise?
One night in the legendary coffee house Moka Efti! Members of the Berliner Philharmoniker play dance music of the 1920s – foxtrots and shimmies, tangos and blues ballads. Kurt Weill is represented with three works, among them the Kleine Dreigroschenmusik. Stefan Wolpe’s Suite from the Twenties and Mátyás Seiber’s Two Jazzolettes reflect the jazz craze of the time. Between the works, Dagmar Manzel reads texts by Trude Hesterberg, Lotte Lenya and Josephine Baker.
To accompany the film series Philharmoniker – Our history by Eric Schulz, this playlist is dedicated to the orchestra’s past. In addition to the four chief conductors – from Herbert von Karajan to Kirill Petrenko – it also features recordings with Zubin Mehta, Daniel Barenboim and Sergiu Celibidache. The historical milestones presented here include the legendary concert celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall, the founding event of the European Concert series, and the first Education project.