Customer Reviews

Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill / Levine, Lenya, Armstrong, Gilford, et al

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The only fault I can find with this Masterworks release is that it wasn't released ten years ago. The sound is absolutely brilliant, and the performances truly legendary. Lenya displays her unique vocal abilities in selections from 1957 sessions previously unavailable in stereo, including one newly released track. Her work on "Moritaet vom Mackie Messer" with Turk Murphy stands worlds apart from her "Mack the Knife" duet with Louis Armstrong & His All-Stars, defining the parameters of one of the world's most-recorded songs. If you purchase only one CD this year, this should be the one.

Lotte Lenya IS the voice of Kurt Weill's music. Yes, listening to her MAY be an acquired taste. There is a gruffness, a rasp, a sliding around the perfect pitch, but there is also great drama and slyness and wit and authenticity. There are numerous good recordings of fine performers singing Weill & it is not taking anything away from Stratas, McGovern, Lemper, Van Otter, Te Kanawa and the rest, that there is only one Lotte Lenya. If you enjoy this album, purchase the other Masterworks CD with Lenya singing Weill's "7 Deadly Sins." It is unbeatable listening for fans of GREAT music/theatre. VERY Highly Recommended.

There is a popular myth that wives who sing their husbands' songs are their best interpreters (not so with Cher) and there is some truth in that. Edvard Grieg's wife Nina has a unique voice that created its own genre but the insight she imbues in Grieg's music using poets' lyrics are beyond reproach. Lenya being the wife of Weill belongs to that hallowed group. The album has some added tracks to commemorate Weill's centennial (2000). Lenya's original versions of "My Foolish Heart" and "The Saga of Jenny" are idiomatically beautiful. The year in which she sang them (1957) found her in a quavery soprano that is not bel canto or formally trained. She has this -- pardon the oxymoron-- ugly lovely voice that is engaging. And that quaver is attractive to listen to. The additional tracks found her singing songs in "Cabaret" and other songs where her late husband was associated. The year she sang them was 1962 and the vocal difference between 1957 and 1962 are interesting. Where a fluttery voice marked the 1957 recordings, the 1962 voice is an octave lower than laryngitis. But my oh my, can she sing those songs like "So What" and "Married". If advancing age is supposed to make a singer grow more instrospective then Lenya was it. The other tracks has her singing "Mack the Knife" in German and doing the same song with Louis Armstrong in English. The rehearsal take of that song is quite informative. Lenya, obviously not a jazz singer, has problems with the rhythm, but Satchmo, ever the Ambassador guides her and the result is short of magical. Get this album and play when you're in a contemplative and a bit aggressively articulate mood.

Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill is a CD that I treasure. I love her voice with that delicate tremelo and the German via French to English accent. Lenya's ballads are truly lovely...particularly September Song and It Never Was You (from the stageplay Knickerbocker Holiday). Lenya has a voice similar to that of Marlene Dietrich, although most purists would disagree with this, I know. However, where Dietrich's is deep and overtly sexy, Lenya's is light and loving. Her phrasing is something to rave about.

The CD is a mishmash, however, not following the dictates of recording, i.e., keep it together, give the audience a put together album. These tracks skip and jump from one mood to another without stop and make the CD very disconcerting. The song, Jenny (Lady in the Dark), which has been a favorite of mine since I was a kid, comes off as too loud and brassy (which it actually is not), interrupting the atmosphere that has been set by the first two ballads. The German songs belong on another album entirely.

This CD from Sony's Masterworks Heritage continually knocks you to and fro with its change of mood. I only wish Lenya had chosen to sing more songs like Speak Low, Lost in the Stars, Song of Ruth and Foolish Heart. The harsh WWII German songs are rather a bitter pill to swallow alongside the lovely songs Kurt Weill wrote after coming the the United States with Lenya. It's not that I don't appreciate the music, it's just that they don't belong with the rest of the CD.

I also could have lived without the jam session starring Lenya with the young Louis Armstrong. This session seemingly went on forever. However, I think that when Lenya sings Mack the Knife, it's the real thing. But there was room on the album for more Lenya, which is why I bought the CD.

What more can I say? Just that I play the cuts I like and skip the ones I don't. I recommend this album...but just for the songs I mentioned. For me, these songs are worth the price.

`Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill' is a CD of an older vinyl release on which Lenya, Weill's wife for about 20 years, up until his death in 1950, sings several songs from American musicals for which Weill wrote the music with various collaborators doing the lyrics. There are also a few songs from American musical plays by other German composers, Paul Dessau, Hanns Eisler, and John Kander.

Lenya is the quintessential Weill interpreter, as she was a performer on the Berlin stage in the late 1920s and many of Weill's German songs were specifically written to be performed by Lenya. (Ironically, Lotte Lenya is best known today as the actress playing Rosa Klebb in the second James Bond film, `From Russia With Love'. I guess she needed some cigarette money.) So, even though these English songs may not have been written with Lenya in mind, Ms. Lenya should know better than anyone else the kind of interpretation Weill expected from his music.

It is facinating to compare Lenya's singing these songs with that of other major Weill interpreters, especially our best contemporary Weill specialist, Ute Lemper. While Lemper gives us powerful readings, Lenya seems to have an inside track on some of the more gentle sentiments such as those we hear in `September Song', `Speak Low', `Lost in the Stars', and `Sing Me Not a Ballad'.

If nothing else about this album gets you excited, then wait for the finale, which is a duet on Weill's most famous song, `Mack the Knife', sung in English in a duet with Lenya and Louie Armstrong, backed by Armstrong's All-Stars and his own trumpet performance. The great irony of this encounter is on the very last track, where Armstrong is giving advice to Lenya on how to perform her husband's song which she has probably been singing for 30 years.

If you like Kurt Weill's songs or you simply like a wide variety of female vocalists, then this album is for you.

Lotte Lenya was an authentic legend of the musical theatre. Her performances in "The Threepenny Opera" and "Cabaret" are considered by those who saw them to be among the finest ever given anywhere. This CD includes her treasured numbers from both of those landmark shows - but wait, there's more. Lenya also sings most of her husband Kurt Weill's best known American theatre songs like "September Song," "Lost in the Stars," "Speak Low" and "The Saga of Jenny." Anyone who has ever heard Lenya sing knows that she has a unique voice - not pretty or always in perfect pitch. It doesn't matter. She's got "it," and that's all that matters. These recordings ring true to character. My two favorites on this CD are "Foolish Heart" and "It Never Was You." Both nearly forgotten gems. All musical theatre fans should own this CD - it's trul essential.

Lenya--like Callas--was more than a singer. She became the characters, and poured her life of pain and joy into every note. Lenya could not have sung as she did, had she not lived in the dark 1920's Berlin.

Hearing her for the first time can be startling: coarse, cigarette-stained. Bleak, heartless. Or painfully vulnerable. The bitter-sweet "It Never Was You" is true love. Practically screaming in "Trouble Man." Rollicking in "So What!"

And as others have mentioned, toward the end hearing Louis Armstrong COACHING Lenya on "Mack the Knife," which she and Weill created--and Lenya taking laughing graciously along.

The is required listening, just as "Seven Deadly Sins and Berlin Theatre Songs." I envy the person who meets Lenya the first time. Unique. Phenomenal. Incomparable.

Back in dark days of the Age of the LP & Before The Flood, one of my most cherished LP was a two album collection simply titled LOTTE LENYA. It contained a smashing collection of the singer's selections from the pre-World War Two days in Germany, to later work in the United States theatre scene. It was really wonderful & contained great translations of all the German songs in a commemorative insert. Alas, the album was washed away in the Flood. I made attempts to relocate a replacement, but the original seemed to have completely vanished. Then, wonder of wonders, Amazon was born & I thought I had discovered a CD version--with the original cover photo of the Star--but it contents was nothing like the LP. As a matter of fact it was very disappointing.

Ah, shucks...

But then I started looking at other CD's a made a miraculous discovery: all the tunes & their original line-up were found on a compilation of 2 available CDs: LOTTE LENYA SINGS KURT WEIL SINGS KURT WEIL'S THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS & BERLIN THEATRE SONGS, and LOTTE LENYA SINGS KURT WEIL & AMERICAN THEATRE SONGS.

The only real difference between the CD's and the original LP was that they included other numbers (including the fantastic number What Would You Do? from Cabaret) and no translation material--but I'm sure it can be located somewhere on the web. Nonetheless, I felt like I got my baby back--well, something like that anyway.

This CD, LOTTE LENYA SINGS KURT WEIL & AMERICAN THEATRE SONGS, pretty much covers her American Theatre career. Selections 1-12 were on the original LP in that same order. It should be mentioned that many critics agree that Kurt Weill's work really suffered in the American theatre environment. Without the influence of Bertolt Brecht and the playwright's concept of Epic Theatre, Weill had to compromise & satisfy American artistic commercialism. So some of these songs aren't so hot--but the added German numbers compensate & the fact that they represent the legacy of the legendary Lotte Lenya, I still thinks this CD deserves 5 Stars.

Here's a few highlights:

"September Song" is a great American standard & Lenya's interpretation is still the best.

"Trouble Man" is a vocally demanding composition. You can actually hear the singer gasping for breath--and this only heightens the dramatic delivery of the song. It's wonderful.

"What Would You Do?" from Cabaret is effectively performed. It's a compassionate song about an elderly woman who, when confronted by a young idealist asking how she can just sit back when an evil regime begins to dominate society--admits to being afraid, but too old to do anything about it. It has a timely message.

As I previously stated, this CD is not exactly on a par with the all-German lanquage "SEVEN DEADLY SINS." There are historic & sociological reasons for that.

This CD will have immense appear to people who love theatre, dark musicals, German cabaret, the German language, history, etc. I can't recommend this CD enough!

Lotte Lenya sings Kurt Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins & Berlin Theatre Songs
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone

Yes she was the evil comrad in From Russia with Love, the best James Bond movie. It's so funny when she hits of the pretty bond girl, even before Bond himself can! Yes Lotte sings here, and yes this is the same Lotte Lenya, Bobby Daris is referring to in his song Mack The Knife(Miss Lotte Lenya... and ol' Lucy Brown.. oh the line forms on the right baby... now that Macky's back in town". OK this cd is campy and kittchy but that's it's main appaela, Lotte is sort of like a whacke dout Marlene Deitrich, GREAT!!!