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KURT WEILL: PROPHETEN · WALT WHITMAN SONGS
Dohmen · Azesberger · Hampson (Songs) · Wiener Jeunesse-Chor · ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra · Dennis Russell Davies
PROPHETS
A Biblical Cantata from The Eternal Road (1935)
Text by Franz Werfel (1890-1945) and from scriptures / Devised by David Drew
JEREMIAS, DIE STIMME SALOMOS / The Voice of Salomon, Albert Dohmen · RABBI, Kurt Azesberger · JESAJAH, ERSTER WEISSER ENGEL / First White Angel, ENGEL DER ENDZEIT / Angel of the End of Time, Michael Papst · WIDERSPRECHER / The Adversary, Gottfried Hornik · CHANANJAH, Bernd Fröhlich · RAHEL, EINE FRAU / A women, Ursula Fiedler · ERZÄHLER / Narrator, Anselm Lipgens
Wiener Jeunesse-Chor · Wiener Motettenchor
FOUR WALT WHITMAN SONGS
für Stimme und Orchester / for voice and orchestra
Thomas Hampson, Bariton / baritone
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra
Dennis Russell Davies Dirigent / conductor
The score of The Prophets, intended as the last act of The Eternal Road, was the last that Kurt Weill composed in Europe and his last extensive setting in German, before he personally and professionally adopted the language of his new home, America. Musically, he drew on all his previous great works, from Mahagonny and the Seven Deadly Sinsto his Second Symphony. At the same time, he foreshadowed some of his soon-to-be-written works for Broadway. In 1998 David Drew devised the concert adaptation of this act, of which this is the premiere’s recording. The Four Walt Whitman Songs, meanwhile, were a product of the war years and reveal Weill at his most touchingly American, fusing American theater song with the German Lied, Berlin with Brooklyn.
