Like it or not (and I do, very much), Kurt Weill will be inescapable over the coming months. The centenary of his birth falls next year, and this concert kicked off the South Bank's tribute. Despite the fact it's now fashionable (and truthful) to say there's far more to Weill than his work for Brecht, it was with that collaboration that we started.
Anyone who thought we were in for a wallow in Berlin cabaret, however, was in for a shock as the opening piece, Der Jasager (The One who Said Yes), is one of the hardest-hitting works of 20th-century music theatre. The title is a sideswipe at Nietzsche, who claimed saying "yes" to a single moment of being validated the whole of existence. Brecht and Weill turn the idea round in this terrifying parable of a schoolboy whose unquestioned "yes" to what is called "the tradition" leads to his annihilation.
Few works register with such alarm the rise of Nazism and the unquestioning allegiance it demanded. It's full of driven rhythms, sparse textures and polytonal clashes, its relentless progress flawlessly captured by Martyn Brabbins and the London Sinfonietta, with fine singing from Edward Burrows as the boy, Susan Bickley as his invalid mother, and David Barren as the sinister teacher.
After the interval came the incidental music and songs from Happy End, containing some rarely heard gems. The Liquor Dealer's Song, touching and disturbing, is as fine as anything Weill wrote, while the final section - Hosannah Rockerfeller - is one a great theatrical indictment of capitalism. Four singers battled with over-amplification: Shuler Hensley convinced you he was about to knock down the door of Mother Goddam's brothel in Mandalay; Madeleine Worrall was snide in The Sailors' Tango; Nick Holder touchingly remembered the tatty glitter of Bill's Ballroom in Bilbao; and Jenna Russell touchingly mourned Surabaya Jonny's desertion.
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