ICSM Online Journal > Reviews

Kurt Weill, Der Silbersee
Deutsches Symphonie Orchester / Ingo Metzmacher. Philharmonie, Berlin,
16 December 2007
reviewed by Michael Eagleton
Posted 23 April 2008

Ingo Metzmacher is in his first season as the new chief conductor of the DSO Berlin, and the programming is showing subtle changes, reflecting his continuing commitment to music of the twentieth century. Threaded through the season is a series entitled Von deutscher Seele, taking its name from the large-scale cantata by Hans Pfitzner, settings of Eichendorff, which comprised the first concert, and also included are several other key works off the beaten track of the mainstream, such as Schumann's Das Paradies und die Peri - and works by Hans Eisler, Walter Braunfels (the Te Deum) and Hans Werner Henze.

There is also Kurt Weill, a concert performance of the Georg Kaiser Der Silbersee, whose subtitle Ein Wintermärchen - 'A Winter's Tale' - with its resonances including the classic Schlegel-Tieck translation of Shakespeare, and Heine's Deutschland - Ein Wintermärchen chiming well with the professed aims of the series, to explore the nature of 'Germanness'. Der Silbersee was first performed on 18 February 1933, receiving three premieres on the same evening, in Leipzig, Erfurt and Magdeburg, and it was the last of Weill's - and of Kaiser's - works to be premiered in Germany. Hitler had become Chancellor three weeks beforehand; the Reichstag fire was only nine days later, and on 21 March Weill was hurried across the border into France by Caspar Neher and his wife. Neher, of course, was the designer of the Leipzig production, and it was good to see some of his sketches, and archive photographs, in the programme book, as well as a good deal of biographical information on the others involved at the Altes Theater. By contrast, less material appears to have survived concerning the efforts of Erfurt and Magdeburg. It was in Magdeburg that Nazi demonstrations were most virulent, though by the time Weill left the country all three productions had been abandoned, as had plans for a Berlin staging at Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theatre. One further historical note is that in Paris, in November of that year, Maurice Abravanel conducted a concert containing three excerpts from Silbersee which was interrupted by an anti-Semitic demonstration led by the composer Florent Schmidt.

The basis of Metzmacher's Berlin concert on 16 December 2007 was the performing edition which David Drew and Josef Heinzelmann prepared for the 1971 Holland Festival, with the music complete and in its original orchestration, and with the dialogue shortened, linked by a narrator. It works well, and has been revived several times since. Metzmacher conducted Silbersee as a young firebrand in Gelsenkirchen in 1988, and it was maybe an attempt to recapture his youth that he began the Berlin performance last December at such a furious rate, full of venom. The orchestra was equal to the pace set, but was probably grateful to relax into the Gravedigger's duet. In fact, the performance as a whole was one of contrast. The following male quartet's 'Schnalle deinen Gürtel' - 'Tighten up your belt another notch!' - could have done with a little of the spite of the very opening. Similarly the two shop girls, whose grocery store is robbed by the starving Severin and his friends, sung by Mojca Erdmann and Vanessa Barkowski, lacked character. More seriously, the Policeman, Olim, mostly a spoken role, was delivered in a curiously dead-pan manner. Presumably this was deliberate on the part of the actor Thomas Thieme but the result was that the extraordinary scene in the police station (Kaiser the dramatist at his best here), had no impact at all. Olim is writing his report on the robbery in which he has shot and wounded Severin, who has stolen, of all things, a pineapple, and has a crisis of conscience, prompted by the chorus.

Proceedings livened up, however, with the arrival of the Lottery Agent - tenor Burkhard Ulrich dressed as in some Hammer horror movie - who provides Olim with the wherewithal to make amends. This was a superb over-the-top characterisation, with its repeats of 'Zins und Zinzesins' - 'Interest, and Compound Interest' - increasing in exalted wonderment. Olim is now able to buy his very own castle, in which to watch over Severin's recuperation. Equally over the top was the sinister Frau von Luber, his housekeeper, Hanna Schwarz in outstanding voice and partnered by the Baron Laur of Stephan Rügamer, both obviously enjoying their 'Schlaraffenland' duet - the imaginary land of luxury and idleness.

The central roles of Severin and Fennimore were taken by the heroic tenor Torsten Kerl and soprano Chistiane Oelze. Casting Kerl as Severin was perhaps an unnecessary luxury - he began well within himself, opened up significantly in his 'Revenge aria', but was less happy in the subtleties of 'Wass soll ich essen in der Morgenfrüe', the witty Hospital scene in which Olim promises him three good meals a day.
Fennimore, Frau von Luber's niece, who effects the reconciliation between the two men, was superb. The 'Ballad of Caesar's Death' was delivered just as it should be, absolutely straight and with superb diction, every word hitting home. Disappointingly, nothing was made of Fennimore's Dance, save a little foot-tapping (who remembers Maria Friedmann with her bananas at the Royal Albert Hall in 1996?). Kerl and Oelze combined in a beautifully sung and sensitively accompanied 'Silbersee Duet'. The final bars of Silbersee, when Olim and Severin, now united in friendship, and encouraged by Fennimore start to cross the frozen lake to a new life, are some of the most magical Weill ever penned, and it was here that the limitations of a concert performance were felt the most.

Weill's working relationship and friendship with Georg Kaiser predates his first meeting with Bertolt Brecht by several years, and Kaiser's rather more positive yet no less critical view of the human spirit elicited from the composer music which seems at first to be less astringent, less Weillian, than Mahagonny or Der Dreigroschenoper. But the affinities which Silbersee shares with the Second Symphony, and with Der sieben Todsünden point forward rather than back. And while Weill's future lay in success in America, for Kaiser life was not quite so magical. He was expelled from the Prussian Academy of Arts, and died, forgotten, in exile in Switzerland in 1945.

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