The collaboration of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill produced songs in which the bitterness of the words was underlined by the sweetness of the music. For Brecht, if not for Weill, the communication of the message was all-important, but in the selection of songs presented by singer Dagmar Krause and pianist Douglas Finch on Sunday, much of the message was lost.
Most of the songs were sung in German, Krause's voice was amplified with a certain amount of distortion and the piano was played louder than necessary. A few of the titles in the programme were in English, but without fluent German or prior acquaintance, who would have guessed that the innocuous-sounding The Homecoming is a grim poem about returning to the Fatherland in the wake of the bomber squadrons?
Such poems, the extracts from Mahagonny and The Threepenny Opera and the items from the Berliner Requiem were all delivered in a similar manner which diminished the variety of their subject-matter and its treatment. The pieces of theatrical origin lost all their dramatic impact. Sadly, the opportunity to present these songs in an enlightened as well as musical manner was not taken. There is more to Brecht/Weill, words and music, than was to be heard on this occasion.
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