Recording of the Week, Joana Mallwitz conducts music by Kurt Weill

When thinking of the music of Kurt Weill, I should imagine that what first comes to mind for many people would be his theatrical collaborations with Bertolt Brecht such as Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and The Threepenny Opera. What is perhaps less well-known is that he was also the composer of several orchestral works, including two symphonies, a violin concerto, and multiple cantatas. It is the two symphonies that bookend a dynamic new album from German conductor Joana Mallwitz and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin in her debut recording for Deutsche Grammophon.

Mallwitz has been creating quite a buzz since she took over as the orchestra's Chief Conductor and Artistic Director last year, and on the evidence offered here it's extremely easy to see why. She is an ardent advocate of Weill's orchestral music, which rarely gets an outing in the concert hall (as Mallwitz herself has quipped in relation to Symphony No.2, "everyone loves it, but nobody knows it").

Symphony No. 1 in particular is stylistically quite unlike Weill's later stage works. Written in 1921 whilst he was still studying composition with Busoni at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin, the score had been thought lost until years after his death, when his widow, Lotte Lenya, put out a request in a German newspaper to ask if anyone happened to have any scores by her late husband (it turned out that some nuns had been hiding the manuscript from the Nazis in a convent in Italy). It opens with a series of strident chords that immediately shows the formidable strengths of this orchestra, with the penetratingly mordant cut of the brass in these initial moments giving way to expressive strings and woodwinds in the Andante religioso section later on.

More familiar to many will be Symphony No. 2, premiered in Amsterdam in October 1943 by Bruno Walter and the Concertgebouw (the piece was championed by Walter, who also conducted the US premiere two months later with the New York Philharmonic). It is closer in feeling to the stage works, and again Mallwitz and the Konzerthausorchester prove to be ideal interpreters, especially in the restless third movement, full of swirling winds and raucous brass.

As fine as these performances are, the highlight of the album has to be a vivid, flamboyant account of another Brechtian partnership: The Seven Deadly Sins (composed in the same year as Symphony No. 2). Described as a 'sung ballet', it follows the character of Anna who is sent by her family to visit seven different American cities in order to earn money, but who is largely thwarted in her attempts as she commits one of the eponymous sins in each location.

In the central role is Katharine Mehrling, and to say that she presents a bravura performance is something of an understatement: from her very first entry in the Prologue she grabs the part with both hands and refuses to let go. Using plenty of chest voice even in her upper register, she absolutely captures the required tone every step of the way, whether it be leaning into the nightclub vibes of the 'Pride' movement as she recounts getting a job as a cabaret dancer in Memphis, or the combination of anger and weariness that she brings to her description of the comfortable life that the residents of San Francisco lead in 'Envy'.

She is joined by an impressive quartet of men making up Anna's family members, who are given many opportunities to shine, not least in their close harmony number, 'Gluttony', or their impassioned contributions as they articulate their fervent hope that Anna will not succumb to the sin of sloth. Underpinning all of this is the consistently striking support from the orchestra: as soon as the prologue begins, with the cheeky swagger of the clarinets accompanied by banjo and pizzicato strings, it's clear that Mallwitz has the measure of this score, and this continues into the dance-like lilt of the waltz sections in the aforementioned cabaret music, complete with a pleasingly chirpy pair of piccolos. All of these factors contribute to a lively, colourful account of Weill's bitingly satirical work.