Lovemusik (2007 Original Broadway Cast)
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Free Music Notes for Lovemusik (2007 Original Broadway Cast)
Free Music Review: Great show; wonderful to have the CD
Hit: 5 Stars
I saw the show in spring of 2007 and loved it. Couldn't believe they hadn't made a soundtrack! I was so disappointed that I couldn't leave the theater with a CD! Then 7 months later I was soooo delighted when Amazon sent me a recommendations email (based on previous purchases) and look at that, they finally DID make a soundtrack! Bought 3: one for me, one for the person I invited to join me, and one for the person who gave me the tickets! Lovemusik: great music and wonderful story. Free Music Review: A terrific score
Hit: 5 Stars
The original cast recording of the musical, "Lovemusik" is a spectacular introduction to the lush and sophisticated music of Kurt Weill and his strange marriage to Lotte Lenya. Weill's music still thrills us after more than fifty years with it's inventive melodies and dissonant harmonies. Mack the Knife, The Alabama Song, Surabaya, Johnny, and September Song are just some of the great contributions of Weill and his lyricists.Free Music Review: Bittersweet "Lovemusik"
Hit: 4 Stars
The idea intrigued me when I heard of it on Broadway: a musical about the relationship between Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, using the music of Kurt Weill and the lyrics of Bertold Brecht (translated), Maxwell Anderson, Ogden Nash, Ira Gershwin, and others. I feared it might be a hodge-podge, a glorified review. I was delightfully surprised that the songs not only fit the characters but advance the story as well, at least those songs that were not presented as part of a show or night club act. And what a cast! Donna Murphy's Lotte Lenya is uncanny, making us forget her distinctly different roles in Sondheim's Passion, Bernstein's Wonderful Town, and Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I. Ms. Murphy obviously studied closely the singing and speaking sounds of Ms. Lenya, so evocative is her imitation. Michael Cerveris plays and sings the part of Kurt Weill in a similarly convincing fashion. Weill's songs almost all contain a bittersweet, slightly foreign quality, which makes them so haunting, and, in this case, makes them eminently suitable to the bittersweet story. From the beginning of the show, when Weill and Lenya sing "Speak Low" to the end when Lenya and her new friend sing "September Song", one is under the spell of this extraordinary composer who, having escaped Nazi Germany, made something of an artisitc success in the U.S.A., if not always with the woman he loved. He certainly made his distinctive mark on the American musical theater. The cd recaptured for me all that I found satisfying in the too-short-lived show, produced by the legendary Harold Prince, with a book by Alfred (Driving Miss Daisy, Parade) Uhry.Free Music Review: silly accent
Hit: 4 Stars
love the renditions of those great old songs, but being a german myself i am a bit distracted by the silly accents the actors put on. of course i understand that lotte lenya and kurt weill spoke that way (maybe) but nevertheless its the only thing that keeps me from considering this great piece of musical theatre from being perfect. four stars out of five
Free Music Review: JUKEBOX MUSIK THAT FLOPS
Hit: 1 Stars
The "jukebox" musical is a fairly new phenomenon. It's called this because, like that pre-iPod noise machine, it's made up of a collection of loosely related songs, usually by the same artist or group. Some recent jukebox hits: Mamma Mia (this music of ABBA) and Jersey Boys, with tunes by The Four Seasons. Some recent flops: The Times They Are A-Changin`, based on Bob Dylan tunes and Good Vibrations, based on those of The Beach Boys. Since the flops they are a-plenty, no one is quite sure exactly what kind of source makes up the basis for a hit jukebox musical. However, using a composer as musically diverse as Kurt Weill seems almost willfully wishing for a flop. Witness LoveMusik. If you blinked you missed the show. The book was by Alfred Uhry (who brought us Driving Miss Daisy) and was been directed by Harold Prince. Now comes the fun part: the lyrics are by (among others) Maxwell Anderson, Bertolt Brecht, Ira Gershwin, Langston Hughes, Alan Jay Lerner and Ogden Nash, a heady heterogeneous group of wordsmith spanning two continents, two decades and a variety of viewpoints. Further, Weill himself composed in an astounding variety of styles and forms, almost all under the guise of "theatre music." A complaint leveled against Sondheim, for instance, is that all his music sounds alike; the peculiar thing about Weill's genius - and he is arguably one of the 20th century's great composers - is that little of his music from one show sounds anything like any other show of his. Face it: "Mack the Knife," "Speak Low" and "September Song" don't really sound like they're from the same show, do they? And so LoveMusik is this wild combination of more than 25 songs that, to put it mildly, clash. Further, since the story concerns the complicated relationship of Weill and his wife Lotte Lenya, the disparate songs are imposed on the plot, rather than growing out of it. Michael Cerveris plays Weill, and Donna Murphy plays Lenya, and they are both quite simply the best that Broadway has to offer at the moment. And, alas, Weill's music in concert form with these two artists would be an infinitely more pleasing experience than this short-lived jukebox musical.