Hard on the heels of ‘The Kurt Weill Album’, Joana Mallwitz’s confidently branded yellow label debut (DG, 9/24), LSO Live offers this fascinating alternative based on concerts given in April 2022 at London’s Barbican Hall. Die sieben Todsünden (‘The Seven Deadly Sins’) looks like common ground but the rationale of Mallwitz’s project lies elsewhere, in her sparkling realisations of cleaned-up editions of the two symphonies. When it comes to Weill’s satirical ballet chanté of 1933 she reverts to the version transposed down a fourth and otherwise tweaked by conductor Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg in the 1950s. Mallwitz’s Anna is Katharine Mehrling, an excellent singing actress, only Weill wasn’t writing for that voice type.

Simon Rattle, who first recorded this music some 40 years ago (EMI, 4/83), has his own ideas about what constitutes authenticity at this stage of the composer’s career, again giving us the score at its original pitch. This may or may not lie rather high for the remarkable Magdalena KoŽená but she deploys her idiosyncratic operatic mezzo with remarkable confidence and no lack of character, apparently channelling advice from veteran chansonnier HK Gruber. Her commitment is perhaps most striking in the ‘Neid’ (Envy) section, where any trace of art-music caution is blown out of the water. With Mallwitz’s direction all about deftness and fluency, Rattle is typically weightier, giving himself time to shape lyrical ideas.

The vocal makeweights give three out of four of the all-male ‘Greek chorus’ family a star turn. The most important is a rarity, Vom Tod in Wald (‘Death in the Forest’), a dark mini-cantata in which the composer, in 1927, is still burnishing his modernist credentials. The bass soloist is Florian Boesch, on top form. Tenor Andrew Staples is assigned ‘Lonely House’ from Street Scene (1947), at the opposite pole stylistically and as lush a number as Weill ever penned. Two out of Four Walt Whitman Songs precede Kleine Dreigroschenmusik (‘Little Threepenny Music’), latterly a repertoire staple in its own right. ‘Absolutely not Jazz’, as Sir Simon might say, it’s the one comparative disappointment, sleek yet impassive, at times virtually unphrased. The dearth of pizzazz would seem to be an aesthetic ploy rather than the product of inadequate rehearsal. No matter. Having decided to contextualise the main work in primarily vocal fashion, LSO Live has gone to town with texts, translations, artist bios and more in a glamorous hardback package. For once the shallow perspectives of the Barbican Hall serve the music perfectly well as miked. This is definitely more than a souvenir for LSO loyalists.