“The Party’s Over” was the billing for the final concert of Bittersweet Metropolis, the Philharmonia’s celebration of the Weimar Republic.
The suite Berg compiled to promote his opera Lulu was premiered under Erich Kleiber in November 1934. Unsurprisingly the Nazis didn’t like it. Within a few weeks Kleiber had emigrated. Berg died the following year. With Rebecca Nelsen a captivating soloist, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted an almost indecently sensual performance. No wonder Goebbels found it decadent.
A decade and a half before, Ferruccio Busoni released two extracts from Doktor Faust, the Sarabande and the Cortège. Their string textures and avant-garde harmonies were handled sensitively by Salonen. The Concerto for Violin and Wind Orchestra by Busoni’s pupil Kurt Weill is more pungent, echoing Stravinsky and Weill’s Threepenny Opera of a few years later.
Hindemith wanted the third of the dances from his absurdist mixed-media entertainment Das Nusch-Nuschi “to be danced (or rather wobbled to) by two eunuchs with incredibly fat and naked bellies”. None, it seems, were available last night.
