This November, the Houston Symphony is mixing things up with The Seven Deadly Sins, a playfully provocative program put together by acclaimed guest conductor Bramwell Tovey. “Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins with Storm Large was our starting point,” Tovey explained.
“Kurt Weill was a German-Jewish refugee who escaped the Nazis and eventually became a U.S. citizen. He was an early believer in the power of music to effect social change, a philosophy nowadays widely adopted by musicians but that was much rarer in the 1930s. He was most famous for composing ‘Mack the Knife’ as part of his Threepenny Opera in partnership with his longtime collaborator, Bertholt Brecht.”
Written in Paris just after Weill and Brecht had fled Nazi Germany, The Seven Deadly Sins tells the story of Anna, a woman also exiled in her own way as she travels to make money for her family. During her sojourn, she visits seven cities—and discovers a deadly sin in each one. Continually torn between the need to make money and her heart’s desires, Anna has a Freudian split personality—Anna I is her practical side (her Ego) and Anna II is more emotional (her Id).
“Kurt Weill wrote The Seven Deadly Sins on commission from Edward James, an Englishman whose wife, Tilly Losch, was a ballerina with an uncanny resemblance to the singer Lotte Lenya, who was Weill’s wife,” said Tovey. “James insisted that Losch dance the role of Anna II in tandem with Lenya’s vocal performance as Anna I.” In the Houston Symphony’s presentation, both roles will be performed by the irresistible Storm Large, who first rose to national fame on the TV show Rock Star: Supernova and serves as one of the lead vocalists of the band Pink Martini:
Full of tuneful waltzes, foxtrots and tangos, The Seven Deadly Sins is a prime example of Weill’s interest in blurring the lines between popular entertainment and high art. The roles of Anna I and Anna II are thus ideally suited to Large’s voice and background. “Anna was originally written for Lotte Lenya, who was an old-school showgirl between the World Wars,” said Large. “She was sexually unconventional, an artist. What I do is tap into my own similar experiences as a performer and personality…my rock ’n’ roll spirit gets me into the piece.”
In addition to Weill’s masterpiece, the concert also features The Dance of the Seven Veils from Richard Strauss’ opera Salome. “The Dance of the Seven Veils seemed the perfect opener with its mystical numerical link,” Tovey noted, referring to the correspondence between the seven veils and seven sins. Based on the biblical story of Salome and John the Baptist, the opera was banned after only one performance at the Metropolitan Opera in 1907, thanks in part to this scandalous Dance:
“Finally, Scriabin’s extraordinary Le Poème de l’extase chose itself as a symphonic masterpiece concerned with unbridled passion,” Tovey concluded. “The work is based around concepts the composer left unpublished but shared with the conductor of the first performance: ‘His soul in the orgy of love, the realization of a fantastical dream, and the glory of his own art.’” Composed for an enormous orchestra, the piece features heady chromatic harmonies and swirling fragments of melody that gradually build to a tremendous climax—the work’s final chord is often cited as the loudest music ever written.
Don’t miss The Seven Deadly Sins on November 2, 3 and 4 at Jones Hall. Get tickets and more information at houstonsymphony.org.
