A Provocative Debut of Weill, Brecht Cantata

From its general obscurity, we might imagine Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s dramatic cantata “Der Lindberghflug” to be little more than a historical curiosity. But its belated West Coast premiere--from the fine French choir Soli-Tutti and the Symphony in the Glen on Saturday at the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro--revealed strikingly effective music with much interesting potential for either concert or staged performance.

Originally composed in 1929 as a radio score, this quasi-allegorical treatment of Lindbergh’s famous transatlantic flight went through several iterations before reaching its final concert version. It had its U.S. premiere as early as 1931, with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra presenting an English translation by George Antheil.

Soli-Tutti sang the 40-minute work in German, however, with only the narrator’s spoken synopses projected as English super-titles. Semi-staged in costumed, erratically lighted tableaux, this touring production--if that is not too grand a word--relied entirely on musical values.

Happily, those were consistently high, save in Lindbergh’s mid-flight speech to his plane, where composer, librettist and performers all seemed embarrassingly uninspired. Eric Laigle sang the title role in a pliant tenor, with the more demonstrative voices of Nathalie Perbost, Eric Billet, Marcos Laureiro de Sa and Jean-Marc Thoron in cameo parts.

Far from their usual haunts in Griffith Park but on clearly congenial musical turf, the Symphony in the Glen and conductor Arthur B. Rubinstein delivered Weill’s spare, dark score with pointed professionalism. Soli-Tutti, of course, provided the solid choral interjections, with the children’s choir of Le Lycee Francais de Los Angeles filling out the final crowd scene with engaging spirits and voices.

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On the first half of the program, Soli-Tutti came out clapping and stamping in Stanley Glasser’s Zulu tour-de-force “Khuthazo.” The 12-voice ensemble could sound reedy at times, but in immaculately clear textures and a remarkably supple rhythmic context. A passionately evocative performance of Poulenc’s Sept Chansons, beautifully shaped by director Denis Gaugheyrie, was the high point of that set.

Rubinstein and his orchestra opened the concert with a highly competent but nonetheless underwhelming reading of Milhaud’s “Creation du Monde,” suggesting that the bloom is long off that relic of the symphonic jazz era.