Pride is for the wealthy – if you want to succeed, you put it aside and give them what they want. In a time of economic crisis there’s only one way for a girl to get ahead; Bertolt Brecht knew that back in 1933, and Kurt Weill set it to music that stings even while it’s slipping tune after fabulously sleazy tune into your unresisting ears. Social comment has never been so shamelessly entertaining: this is The Seven Deadly Sins, and it’s the climax of a typically imaginative programme from the BBC SSO’s Principal Guest Conductor Ilan Volkov - who also champions the arrestingly piquant music of Mahler’s great friend and Weill’s sometime teacher, the Italian maverick Ferruccio Busoni.
Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room
Dr Deborah Lewer, Senior Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Glasgow, discusses Weimar-era Berlin.
Words by Bertolt Brecht, sung in German, with supertitles in English.
The recording of this concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Monday 24 October at 7.30pm.
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