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PROGRAM NOTES Kurt Weill: Symphony No. 2 On the Cusp Paris, December 1932, and wild enthusiasm greeted Weill’s music. The composer Darius Milhaud wrote: Thanks to the generosity of the Vicontesse de Noailles, we were able to present Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny and Der Jasager, for which the soloist Lotte Lenya and the conductor Maurice Abravanel came from Germany.…I told Madeline [Milhaud’s wife] that we should no doubt find that the city had been taken by storm. Little did I know how true this was, for the delirious enthusiasm aroused by these two works lasted for several days. The Montparnasse…saw in it an expression of the moral bankruptcy and pessimism of our time. Smart society was as carried away as if it had been the first performance of a Bach Passion.1 The success of these performances inspired the Princesse Edmond de Polignac, heiress of the Singer family of sewing machine fame and a great patron of music, to commission him to compose a symphony. The symphony is dedicated to her. Weill began work on it in Germany in January 1933, shortly before the Reichstag fire and Hitler’s swearing in as Reichskanzler, and shortly before Weill and Lenya fled Germany for Paris. He completed the symphony in a village near Paris, Louveciennes. Since his First Symphony from twelve years earlier had never been performed, Weill referred to his new one as his first. The conductor Bruno Walter pleaded with him to give it a more colorful name, and he reluctantly offered the descriptive title Symphonische Fantasie. Its premiere was on 11 October 1934 in Amsterdam, with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and with fellow refugee Walter conducting. From Amsterdam, Weill wrote enthusiastically to Lotte Lenya, “The rehearsal was wonderful. Walter makes it great, and they are all very enthusiastic, especially the whole orchestra. It is a good piece and sounds outstanding.”2 At the concert, the audience was enthusiastic, but the press was unable to separate style from content and did not react favorably. Nonetheless, Bruno Walter continued to conduct the Second Symphony, taking it to Rotterdam and the Hague that same fall, then to New York with the New York Philharmonic in December 1934 (where it was performed under the name Three Night Scenes), and to Vienna in 1938. The music of the Second Symphony is a fascinating synthesis of Weill’s newer popular language and a continuing commitment to careful, long-range musical organization. For all the effect the political Bertolt Brecht had on his sometime collaborator, the composer could never agree with him that music should merely carry the words, that it was simply functional. Weill—and it is here that his legacy glows, in all its styles—always insisted that music, even when it was political or didactic, must engage both the mind and the heart. It seems safe to say that, without the sophisticated organization that informed all of Weill’s compositions, his music would have long ago ceased to fascinate, and the discussion of one, two or three Weills would be meaningless. How many there were, and what the conflicts and contradictions were, remains interesting simply and precisely because there was only one Weill. As Arnold Schoenberg knew (but sometimes forgot), style and substance are independent qualities. The first movement jumps in with a restless gesture and a wearied response; together, they become the seeds of much of the symphony’s material. From this opening, a halting funeral procession appears and passes. Suddenly, agitation launches the body of the movement that, for all its scurrying, never loses its Classical poise. In the preface to the published score, the Weill scholar David Drew writes, “In the clarity and brilliance of the textures, Weill reveals—not for the first time—his profound love for the music of Mozart, while the romantic and ‘popular’ aspects of the work show what he has learned from Schubert and Mahler. The resulting synthesis of classical and romantic elements is very much of his own.”3 Near the end of the movement, an unexpected tranquility breaks through, even though nervous drumming continues beneath. It is a breathtaking moment, but soon it is thrust aside by rushing agitation. The second movement erupts with startling violence. This uneasy music—which will rise up again—calms, and the soul of the movement, a noble lament for trombone, blooms. The last movement, a quickstep, complete with chirping piccolos, a mocking march for wind band, and an agitating tarantella, is pure Mozart-Hindemith—in other words, pure Weill. As the movement gallops to its close, a lone trumpet wails out, but its mournful vulnerability is pushed aside by the military snap of orchestra and timpani. After Weill came to the United States, he told a reporter: “I write absolute music in order to—how can I say it?—control my own style. You must turn away from your habitual way occasionally.”4 Weill’s habitual way had changed even since 1933, and he was now dedicated to reaching people through the theater. Although he had come to believe that instrumental music was elitist, the lasting sophistication of his music for Broadway would not have been possible without works like the Second Symphony. As Drew writes, “The symphony is an expression of Weill’s creative imagination at its purest and most characteristic. Certainly none of his works is more deeply felt.”5 This was to be Weill’s last purely instrumental work for the concert hall. 1Darius Milhaud, Notes without Music, (Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1952, p. 236).
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