Neues Land, Neue Sprache at the Kurt Weill Festival Dessau, 2020

Faced with unexpected exile from a homeland and the daunting challenge for an established composer to write songs in a new language upon arrival in a new country, this concert celebrates the beginnings and eventual mastery by Kurt Weill of songs in English with three other Nazi-exiled emigre composers to the U.S. and Canada in the 1930s/40s: Paul Hindemith, renowned Czech-Canadian composer Oskar Morawetz and Hungarian-Canadian composer Istvan Anhalt. Europe’s loss was North America’s gain in this enrichment of the modern English song repertoire.
Selections include songs from several film scores composed by Weill and the musical Huckleberry Finn, uncompleted at his death in 1950. Lyricists include Maxwell Anderson, Ann Ronell and Ira Gershwin.
Soprano Leah Gordon and bass baritone Justin Hopkins are accompanied by conductor/ pianist Philip Headlam who will introduce the songs from the stage and play the Weill songs in his own piano arrangements.