San Francisco Classical Voice

CHORAL REVIEW Flying High, Middle, and Low with Pacific Mozart
March 10, 2002

By Robert Commanday

If asked about Kurt Weill's vision, most would probably think it would be of a Marxist, socialist society, but one large work he wrote in 1929 showed a foresight not to say prescience that was considerably more impressive. Der Lindberghflug (“The Lindbergh Flight”) performed by the Pacific Mozart Ensemble last weekend, was perhaps the only serious musical work that saw the monumental import of an achievement that in fact heralded the dawn of intercontinental air travel. At the same time, this work recognized radio, then in its infancy, as the medium of the future, specifically for broadcasting music to universal audiences.

“The Lindbergh Flight” consumed the first half of a concert entitled “The Music of the Skies,” heard Friday by an audience of about 300, bunched in an improvised concert space on the vast hangar deck of the aircraft carrier,”U.S. Hornet” berthed in Alameda. That great ship is now a museum. (Sunday, the Pacific Mozart Ensemble performed it in another appropriate venue, the Aviation Museum at the SF International Airport's International Terminal, and on Saturday, in the warmer and more comfortable Herbst Theater).

On reading the text before the performance began, with the naiveté, not to say homeliness, of Bertolt Brecht's prose for what he termed a “Teaching Play, I didn't have a lot of hope. In performance however, Weill's music took over and made it into an interesting work. It traced the epic adventure from the initial stages of Lindbergh's planning the flight and the building of the Spirit of St. Louis to his landing at the Paris Le Bourget Aerodrome and epilog. The score, in cantata form, featured a narrator, Lindbergh, sung by the tenor David Gordon, two occasional soloists, bass and baritone, chorus and small orchestra. Weill achieved considerable contrast and effective variety with these forces.

Lindbergh's first solo, introducing himself, was the only section set in Weill's ricky-tick Berliner jazz manner, fortunately. The succeeding elements included a women's chorus describing the sound of Lindbergh's plane in the sky as heard from a ship at sea, baroque-styled for tenors in unison representing The Fog that threatens the flyer, a section with muted trumpets accompanying the bass soloist softly trying to seduce him into day-dreaming. Also arresting were the sections in which Lindbergh expressed his determination (over a two-part counterpoint of violin and viola), his conversation with his engine (muted drum and two bassoons), and finally the landing and welcome, leading to a trio of the three male soloists and a strong closing chorus.

The singular musical celebration of a hero

Strange, how the Lindbergh flight captured imaginations worldwide, granting him a mythic stature perhaps unique in the century, yet this seems to have been its own celebration in a serious musical genre. The only other related music that came out at the time were the popular Lucky Lindy songs.

For all its contrasts in style and orchestration, Der Lindberghflug held together. The PME director, Richard Grant, had it well in hand, achieving a good tempo flow and continuity, and good balance between the vocal and orchestral forces. David Gordon sang Lindbergh excellently in his clear, fine tenor, catching the quality of the flyer's resolve. Marc Accornero and Stephen Saxon sang the baritone and bass roles creditably. The performance was presented in the manner of the original as a radio cantata (Otto Klemperer conducted the premiere), in German. The Narrator's lines, were spoken by John Stenzel, followed by translations, by Andrew Stewart (in English), and then by Christine Grisot d'Allance (in French, but with no amplification used, she was almost inaudible). Supertitles were flashed on a screen.

The program opened with a brief wordless piece by Meredith Monk, Astronaut Anthem of modest interest. Following the Weill and intermission were excerpts from Richard Rodgers' Victory at Sea with its jaunty march, conducted by the assistant director Ann Krinitsky, the Navy Hymn impressively presented, and from film scores, the wordless title theme of Michael Kamen's Band of Brothers, John Williams' “Hymn to the Fallen” (Saving Private Ryan) and Philip Glass' “Vessels” (from Koyaanisqatsi). This last, conducted by Krinitsky, was well sung, also wordless, in the familiar Glass manner of slow-changing harmonies and material repeated in gradual variations. Excerpts from the 1982 were projected, including city visions and traffic viewed from the sky, a 747 landing, military images (frightening enough in today's world). There was also a pervasive piece involving women's voices singing wordlessly, and intense kind of mood music, Julia Wolfe's “Amelia Flying” (from the oratorio Lost Objects).

A surprising omission

Wordless vocal music always suffers rhythmically, one of the reasons that choruses don't particularly enjoy it. Surprisingly not included in the program was one work that would have been given appropriate recognition of the flyers in World War II, “The Ballad of Hurry Up and Wait” from Marc Blitzstein's Airborne Symphony.

At any event, the program ended on music denoting peace, Krinitsky conducting the “Et in Terra Pax” from Vivaldi's Gloria and Grant conducting the “Dona Nobis Pacem” from Bach's B minor Mass. No fault of the well-balanced and secure chorus or of the excellent little orchestra, but both performances were as flat level and deadpan in phrasing as you would never want to hear them. It was necessary then to imagine instead the glorious radiating arc of the Bach and supply what was missing.

(Robert P. Commanday, the senior editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.)