Der Protagonist
Chamber Music
The Firebrand of Florence
Die Dreigroschenoper

Kurt Weill's Der Protagonist Is Published

The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music and European American Music Corporation are pleased to announce the publication of Kurt Weill's first opera, the one-acter Der Protagonist (1925) with a libretto by Georg Kaiser. Edited by Dr. Gunther Diehl of Wiesbaden, Germany, and Jürgen Selk (former Managing Editor of the Kurt Weill Edition), the volume publishes Weill's orchestral score for the first time.

Completed in Berlin in March 1925 and given its premiere at the Dresden Staatsoper on 27 March 1926, Der Protagonist occupies a special place in Weill's oeuvre. It was his first opera, written at age twenty-five, and belongs to a series of early compositions that systematically explored almost every musical genre: chamber music, choral music, lieder, orchestral works, and ballet. The opera is the climax of Weill's early development and no other work is so characteristic of his early style.

With the successful premiere of the opera on 27 March 1926, conducted by the eminent Fritz Busch, Weill not only achieved a spectacular breakthrough as a composer but also immediately rose to prominence among the young composers identified at the time with the renewal of the "crisis-ridden genre" of opera.

Der Protagonist marks Weill's first significant collaboration with another artist. Georg Kaiser (1878-1945) was an outstanding representative of expressionist drama. Along with Gerhart Hauptmann he was the most performed German playwright during the Weimar Republic, with some forty premieres of his plays.

The next volumes in the Kurt Weill Edition, currently in production, are: Music with Solo Violin (Concerto for Violin and Wind Orchestra, op. 12, and Der neue Orpheus, op. 16), edited by Andreas Eichhorn; Popular Adaptations, 1927-1950 (edited by Charles Hamm); and Zaubernacht (edited by Elmar Juchem and Andrew Kuster).

Kurt Weill's Chamber Music Is Published

The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music and European American Music Corporation are pleased to announce the publication of Kurt Weill's complete Chamber Music. Edited by Dr. Wolfgang Rathert (Professor of musicology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich) and Jürgen Selk (Managing Editor, Kurt Weill Edition), the new publication makes available musical works by Kurt Weill which, while comprising only a small portion of Weill's oeuvre, played a considerable role in his formative years (1919-24). The new edition includes two string quartets as well as two separate movements for string quartet, a sonata for violoncello and piano, the song cycle Frauentanz, and the vocal-instrumental miniature Ick sitze da--un esse Klops.

The relative obscurity of Weill's chamber music can be partially explained by the overshadowing success of his first stage works, beginning with the acclaimed one-act opera Der Protagonist. However, the compositional quality and musical significance of these works of "absolute music" have also been obscured by their uneven publication and performance history, which partly explains their absence from the mainstream of the concert repertoire. This is regrettable, as some of these pieces are of considerable ingenuity and aesthetic appeal and may rank among the outstanding German musical works of this period.

The new edition of Weill's Chamber Music makes this body of work available now in one volume. Several of the Chamber Music works included in the new edition have never before been available in print. Published with an accompanying critical report volume, Chamber Music constitutes the fourth volume in the Kurt Weill Edition, a collected critical edition of his completed works. The next volume in the Kurt Weill Edition, currently in production, is the critical edition of Weill's one-act opera Der Protagonist, scheduled for publication in 2005.

Kurt Weill's The Firebrand of Florence Is Published

First Ever Broadway Critical Edition

The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music and European American Music Corporation are pleased to announce the publication of the first critical edition of a Broadway musical, Kurt Weill's and Ira Gershwin's The Firebrand of Florence. Edited by the music theorist and Broadway scholar Joel Galand, the new publication finally makes available for the first time the complete score and libretto of one of Weill's most expansive musical offerings. Published in two volumes with an accompanying critical report volume, The Firebrand of Florence constitutes the third publication in the Kurt Weill Edition, a collected critical edition of his completed works.

After the original Broadway run in 1945 in a lavish spectacle produced by Max Gordon, The Firebrand of Florence disappeared into undeserved obscurity, despite the fact that the work boasted a score by Weill, lyrics by Gershwin, and a book by Edwin Justus Mayer, esteemed playwright and screenwriter for numerous films, including To Be or Not To Be. In the mid-1990s, highlights from Firebrand based on original source material were included in two recorded compilations of Weill's Broadway music. But not until three recent presentations--1999 staged production at Ohio Light Opera and two concert versions in 2000 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London and by the Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna--have contemporary audiences been able to experience this work in its entirety. These performances, which were based on a preliminary version of the now completed critical edition, played to critical acclaim and suggest a future for Firebrand beyond that of a curiosity for Broadway specialists.

After The Firebrand of Florence closed, Weill moved on to other projects and left no further indication as to the form in which Firebrand might be transmitted for future use. Therefore, the editor was called upon to evaluate various sources illustrating the work's collaborative evolution between its tryouts in Boston in 1945 and its subsequent staging on Broadway. Significant alterations in the form of cuts, reorchestrations, or reordering of musical sections, complicated the determination of which musical numbers should be included in the edition, and how. However, the critical report which accompanies the full score provides a comprehensive discussion of the existing sources, describes alternatives, and on the basis of the source evidence explains the editorial decision making process in concise prose.

[A recording of the work made from the BBC Symphony performance under the direction of Sir Andrew Davis appeared in 2003 on the Capriccio label.]

Press release announcing the publication of a new critical edition of Weill's Die Dreigroschenoper as part of the Kurt Weill Edition

The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music and European American Music Corporation are pleased to announce the publication of the new critical edition of Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) as part of their collected edition series, the Kurt Weill Edition (KWE). The new edition is co-edited by Stephen Hinton, one of the pre-eminent Weill scholars active in the world today, and Edward Harsh, the Managing Editor of the KWE project.

Ever since its first production took Berlin by storm in 1928, Die Dreigroschenoper has been widely seen as one of the most important music-theatrical works of the twentieth-century as well as an icon of Weimar culture. Still, through seventy-two years and literally thousands of productions, the work had never been available in an authoritative edition. The new edition reconciles the many confusions of detail in the three key sources that emerged from that famed original 1928 production: Weill's manuscript, the published libretto, and the published piano-vocal score. But the editors went far beyond those three items to consult several dozen other documents, from the original, hand-written instrumental parts to Weill's correspondence with his publisher Universal Edition, to contemporaneous press reviews and recordings.

The result is a corrected, self-consistent version true to the historical state of the work that first so electrified its audiences. The edition presents not just the musical text but the complete dialogue and stage instructions in their proper sequence as well. Included are many features never before published. For instance, the original production included six pieces of instrumental stage music based upon a few of the work's most popular songs. The editors were able to reconstruct five of these from the instrumental parts and have included them in a special appendix. Another appendix offers additional strophes that could be used by performers as alternatives or supplements to four of the songs in the main text.

The new edition was used for the first time on the recently-released BMG recording by the Ensemble Modern and HK Gruber, a recording that has earned critical raves:

This new two-disc set of Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera, featuring composer and chansonnier HK Gruber with the excellent Ensemble Modern of Frankfurt, wrenches you mercilessly our of your comfy chair into the grubby world of 1920s Weimar Republic theatre--The content of Weill's and Brecht's low-life adaptation of The Beggar's Opera was never set in tablets of stone. Even at its first performance in 1928, circumstances dictated ad hoc additions omissions right up to the last minute. Based on the new Kurt Weill Edition, prepared by Stephen Hinton and Edward Harsh, this recording incorporates the fruits of their research, including instrumental entr-actes and scene-setting summaries devised by Brecht for a 1930s concert version.

--The Daily Telegraph (London)

Das Ensemble Modern garantiert messerscharfe Präzision und sanften Swing, schräge Verrücktheiten und subversive Phantasie ohne Ende. HK Gruber dirigiert mit Besessenheit am Detail und Liebe zum Stück. Die Aufnahme ist nicht nur Ohrenbalsam und interpretatorischer Glücksfall, der den Übergang Weills ins nächste Jahrtausend vorzeichnet, sondern auch eine editorische Pioniertat. Zugrunde liegt nämlich zum ersten Mal die kritische Neuausgabe der Kurt Weill Foundation.

--Opernwelt