Portraying Passion

Sjoerd Staal — Wed, 28 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

On the morning of 21 March 1933, the composer Kurt Weill received a telephone call at the home of his stage designer Casper Neher, whom he was visiting with his wife, the actor-singer Lotte Lenya. A friend working at a local police station notified him that the SS were on their way to apprehend him at his apartment, charging him with “Jewish cultural bolshevism” and of being a “degenerate artist.”

Quickly, Weill gathered what he could into a small suitcase from his apartment before joining Lenya in Neher’s car, where together with Neher’s wife Erika they quickly made their escape towards the French border. On arriving, Lenya departed by train to Vienna, as she and Weill were in the middle of divorce proceedings (finalized on 18 September). Weill and the Nehers arrived in Paris safely on 23 March. It would become his home for the next two years, where he would compose some of his most memorable works.

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Walton: Sinding Viola Concertos

Sjoerd Staal — Thu, 23 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Predicting which musical currents would sweep the young William Walton along in in the mid 1920s must have been tricky. The composer had already given birth to the acerbic, neo-classical take on texts by Edith Sitwell that was Façade (1922). Two years later he spent a season knocking-out foxtrots for the Savoy Orpheus Band, and even started work on a concerto for two pianos, jazz band and orchestra. Four years after that, Walton hatched plans for his first orchestral concerto proper: a score that would take elements from both those pieces but would stand with at least one foot in the late Romantic tradition of Elgar, Bax and others.

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Joshua Weilerstein Archives - NativeDSD Music

Portraying Passion

Walton: Sinding Viola Concertos