Ute Lemper & “Fall of the Weimar Republic" at Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 22 February 2024 14:24

Written by Jack Angstreich

Ute Lemper, photo by Stephanie Berger

At Zankel Hall on the evening of Friday, February 9th, I had the privilege to attend a memorable concert entitled “Weimar Berlin and After the Exodus”—as part of Carnegie Hall’s current festival, “Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice”—featuring the marvelous Ute Lemper, with Vana Gierig on piano, Matthew Parrish on bass, Todd Turkisher on drums, and Cyrus Beroukhim on violin.

Lemper is the foremost contemporary interpreter of cabaret music of the Weimar era, a current successor to legends like Marlene Dietrich or Lotte Lenya. (Other precursors include Zarah Leander, who famously was directed by Douglas Sirk in prewar German films—Hildegard Knef, Hannah Schygulla, and Barbara Sukowa; Nina Hoss brilliantly portrayed such a singer in Christian Petzold’s extraordinary 2014 film,Phoenix.)

The program opened with two songs from Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s immensely celebrated “play with music,” The Threepenny Opera: “Die Moritat von Mackie Messer” and “Kanonen-Song.” She then performed her own song, “On Brecht,” followed by the most famous number from The Threepenny Opera, the magnificent “The Ballad of Mack the Knife.”

A significant figure in Weimar musical culture was the less familiar Mischa Spoliansky—Lemper sang his “Life’s a Swindle,” followed by two more compositions from The Threepenny Opera: “Salomon-Song” and the popular “Pirate Jenny.”

The next set began with two more Spoliansky songs performed in English: “Maskulinum-Femininum” and “When the Special Girlfriend.” Maybe the foremost Weimar cabaret composer, alongside Weill, was Friedrich Hollaender—Lemper sang his “Chuck Out the Men!” and then Spoliansky’s “The Lavender Song” and Leonello Casucci’s “Just a Gigolo.”

“Streets of Exile” by contemporary minimalist composer Philip Glass transitioned into “Surabaya-Johnny” from the Brecht-Weill musical comedy, Happy End and Lemper also combined Hollaender’s “Sex Appeal” with Spoliansky’s “I Am a Vamp.” The first section of the program concluded with Hollaender’s “Ich bin die fesche Lola”—from the 1930 film that made Dietrich a star, Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel—and his “Münchhausen.”

The next section, “Cabaret in Exile,” consisted of music by another major figure of the era, Hanns Eisler: a medley of “On Suicide” and “The Mask of Evil” was succeeded by “The Ballad of Marie Sanders,” which is a setting of a poem by Brecht, one of the composer’s collaborators.

The final portion of the event, “From the Ghettos and Concentration Camps,” began with two Yiddish songs: Rikle Glezer’s “S’iz geven a zumertog” and “Shtiler, Shtiler” by Alexander Volkoviski and Shmerke Kaczerginski. The eminent composer Viktor Ullmann was represented by “Margarit Kelech” alongside Ilse Weber’s “Ich wandre durch Theresienstadt” and concluding with the anonymous “Auschwitz Tango.”