A riveting concert-theater fusion

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) 
Overture to Tannhäuser (1845)  

Wagner’s Tannhäuser is many things to many people: a perfumed medieval fantasy, a fable about spirituality vs. carnality, a moralistic screed about the wages of sin, a tragic love story, a trippy specimen of Victorian eroticism. Its admirers included such disparate types as Queen Victoria and French poet Charles Baudelaire.  

But for one person, it was first and foremost unfinished. That person was Richard Wagner himself, who felt that he “still owed Tannhäuser to the world” to the day he died. No Wagner opera was subject to more revisions and reworkings, and none exists in more alternate versions. Fortunately, the opera’s Overture stayed more or less constant throughout all that churn, although Wagner rewrote its ending in order to segue into a longish ballet for the 1861 Paris production. (The original version comes to a full conclusion.)  

The Overture is made up of three important themes that thread through the opera. The Pilgrim’s Chorus at the opening evokes the world of medieval Germany (i.e., the ‘spiritual’ side of things) while the distinctly up-tempo music that follows is all about the carnal pleasures of Venusberg, where Tannhäuser dwells as of the opera’s opening. Then there’s Tannhäuser’s steamy song in praise of Venus, which gets him into serious hot water with the stuffy brahmins who judge the song contest at Wartburg Castle.

David Schiff (b. 1945) 
⁠Uptown/Downtown: Concerto for Piano & Orchestra (2025; World Premiere & Oregon Symphony Commission) ⁠ 

David Schiff combines a wide range with an enviable depth of experience. Formed as much by hearing jazz greats as he was by hearing Debussy’s La Mer and Copland’s Billy the Kid, he played tuba, then double bass. He studied Victorian literature at Columbia, composition at the Manhattan School of Music. A Kellogg fellowship resulted in two years at Cambridge, interrupted by a year teaching high school in the South Bronx. Then composition study at Juilliard. He has written operas, orchestral and chamber works, synagogue music, and pieces for jazz ensemble. He has contributed numerous articles on music to such publications as The New Yorker and The Atlantic. He is the author of books on George Gershwin, Elliot Carter, and Duke Ellington.  

Eventually this native New Yorker resettled in the Pacific Northwest, where he taught at Portland’s Reed College for decades. Now comes a piano concerto written specifically for the celebrated jazz pianist Darrell Grant. Schiff writes that when he began to map out the concerto, “I steeped myself in the magisterial poetry of Langston Hughes. I decided to base the first movement on his most famous poem, ‘Harlem’, which begins with the words:  

What happens to a dream deferred?  

In Hughes’ Montage of a Dream Deferred (published in 1951) these words lead to a series of poems that capture all aspects of life uptown in Harlem in the first half of the twentieth century. I wanted the music for the concerto to spring from the visionary quality of the poetry.”  

The concerto’s second movement unfolds as a series of variations, which “sprang from my memories of many evenings at places like the Village Vanguard, an intimate space one flight below the busy streets of Greenwich Village, where, beginning in my college years, I was fortunate to hear some of the greatest musicians of all time.”  

Schiff emphasizes that this is not a concerto with elements of jazz, such as those by Gershwin, Copland, and Ravel. It’s written specifically for a jazz pianist who has improvisation in his DNA. “Writing a concerto for a jazz master, Darrell Grant, I wanted to give him many opportunities to improvise, some of them with orchestral accompaniment, others as solo explorations … I look forward to hearing how Darrell Grant reshapes the music in every performance.” 

Alejandro Belgique (b. 2011) 
Ostinato (2025)  

You don’t have to be an adult to be a composer. Teenaged oboist Alejandro Belgique tells us that he “got into composition through trying to transcribe video game music, specifically that of Mario Kart Wii, after I had become acquainted with Sibelius, the music notation software I use. I then started writing down almost every musical idea I had.” 

But the biggest inspiration for his 2025 composition Ostinato was not video game music, but works such as the Mahler Fifth Symphony that the orchestra was playing at the time. Ostinatos, cyclic repetitive musical patterns, have been used to organize music for centuries. Their cyclic nature allows for any amount of free fantasy or variation, as long as the underlying pattern is maintained enough to remain recognizable. Dido’s heartbreaking suicide lament in Purcell’s 1689 opera Dido and Aeneas is an ostinato, as are the last movements of both the Brahms Fourth Symphony (1885) and the Britten Third String Quartet (1975).  

Belgique explains that “the piece begins with a faster section featuring the ostinato throughout, followed by a slower section, which gradually transitions back to the material from the beginning. As the slower middle section progresses, the main ostinato is slowly re-incorporated into the music until it arrives at the recapitulation of sorts.”  

The repetitive pattern is always a great way to focus on a piece with an ostinato, as Belgique tells us: “The audience should be listening for the repeated ostinato that starts from the beginning of the piece, and how it is used throughout the rest of the piece (whether it’s obvious or not).” 

Kurt Weill (1900–1950)
The Seven Deadly Sins (1933)

The heady artistic flamboyance of the Weimar Republic came to a shuddering halt after February 1933, when the Nazis achieved full power following the Reichstag fire. The message to German artists and intellectuals was clear: Get out of Germany, it said. Get out now.

Both Kurt Weill and his frequent collaborator Bertolt Brecht had ample reason to flee; Weill was Jewish, while Brecht was an ardent Marxist. Their partnership stands at the topmost peak of musical theater – think Mozart & Da Ponte, think Gilbert & Sullivan, think Rodgers & Hammerstein. In many ways their Threepenny Opera and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny distill the very essence of Weimar Republic culture. Unfortunately, they detested each other. At one point Brecht threatened to “kick that phony Richard Strauss down the stairs!” while Weill described Brecht as “one of the most repulsive, unpleasant fellows running around on this earth.”

Weill escaped to Paris with only a suitcase and 500 francs, to be joined by an equally impoverished Brecht for what turned out to be their final collaboration, a ballet-with-songs titled The Seven Deadly Sins. It had been commissioned by a ballet impresario named Edward James, rumored to be one of Edward VII’s umpty-million illegitimate children. He had married a ballet dancer named Tilly Losch who was originally unaware that not only was James bisexual – she had thought he was 100% gay – but that he was also deeply smitten with her. As of 1933 the two were estranged, so James sought a ballet custom-tailored for Tilly as a gesture towards reconciliation. His idea was for Tilly to dance while Kurt Weill’s equally estranged wife Lotte Lenya sang, as two aspects of the same character. (It didn’t hurt any that Tilly and Lotte could have passed for twins.) 

Brecht didn’t stay for long. Ever the staunch Marxist, he loathed ballet as a symbol of bourgeois gentility, while his overall aversion to Kurt Weill only added to his distaste. Having made it abundantly clear that he had taken the gig solely for the money, he slapped the libretto together as quickly as he could and beat a hasty exit. Weill, on the other hand, was fully dedicated to the project as a fascinating theatrical experiment. Besides, he hoped it would facilitate a reconciliation with Lotte. (It did, but Edward was not so successful with Tilly.) 

Shorn of its music, The Seven Deadly Sins is a soggy screed against capitalist decadence. Add Weill’s score and the thing lights up like a tower of diamonds. Vintage jazz-infused Weill, the music bristles with that enticing louche seediness that makes The Threepenny Opera such a grimy delight. Divine decadence rules throughout as the bifurcated dancer-singer Anna makes her way through life as a cabaret dancer/stripper, a movie actress, a rich man’s mistress, a two-timing temptress, and eventually a reformed soul who just wants to live quietly in her new house on the banks of the Mississippi. 

A cavalcade of musical genres, The Seven Deadly Sins includes a declamatory chorus (Sloth), cabaret music (Pride), a near-frenetic fox-trot (Anger), a barbershop quartet (Gluttony), an elaborate lyrical sequence (Lechery), a stentorian operatic scene (Greed), and finally a triumphal march (Envy). All through it, a male quartet representing home and family joins Anna as she sings in a variety of styles, sometimes in a chatty parlando, other times making like a sultry chanteuse or lily-pure soprano. Fascinating, compelling, and hugely entertaining, Sins is absolutely sui generis, a pulsating black pearl of musical theater that is just as effective as a concert work as it is staged.