Klarinet Archive - Posting 000201.txt from 2005/09

From: "Margaret Thornhill" <clarinetstudio@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Re: Los Angeles Choir/Weill
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 23:11:32 -0400

Bill,
I wish that you had identified yourself to me at the intermission. I believe
I did shake hands with someone named Bill; I'm sorry if the name didn't
register.
Glad you enjoyed our impromptu musings. Don Gross says you came all the way
from Santa Barbara to hear us; that's a huge compliment.
I haven't done a side-by-side comparison of James Rae's arrangement of Weill
with the original score. I did conduct Weill's own instrumental suite
"Little Threepenny Music" (a long time ago when I was a teaching colleague
of Weill scholar Kim Kowalke) and this quartet seems in the spirit of that.
It's surely not note-for-note. We also souped it up by adding a contra
doubling and sticking in the basset solos to evoke the plaintive color of
Weill's original orchestration, which had bassson and soprano sax. Since the
work is from the twenties--not the sixties--we kept it rhythmically strict
instead of converting it to "swing", the way so many people do.

As for comparing versions of Mack the Knife, Lotte Lenya was Weill's wife,
so she has the original goods. Her German versions are best.There's a long
stylistic leap between her and Bobby Darin, imo.

Thanks again,
Margaret Thornhill

> Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 09:00:01 -0700
> To: klarinet@-----.org
> From: or3mondtoby@-----.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
> Subject: Los Angeles Clarinet Choir
> Message-ID: <23145-432EEE91-3696@-----.net>
>
> Congratulations! Your concert was definitely worth the travel.
>
> For those who weren't there, Margaret Thornhill and Jeff Lewis debated
> whether a basset horn's sound is "caramel" or "distant". :-)
>
> I am curious about the "Mack the Knife" arrangement. Was the original
> score at the same tempo and 'mood' as the arrangement? I am so
> accustomed to the Bobby Darin, Louis Armstrong, Lotte Lenya, etc
> versions that I can't help wondering what Weill wrote originally?
>

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