Thomas Hampson; ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra; Wiener Jeunesse-Chor; Gumpoldskirchner Spatzen; Albert Dohmen; Kurt Azesberger; Michael Papst; Gottfried Hornik; Bernd Frohlich; Ursula Fiedler; De - Kurt Weill: Propheten; Four Walt Whitman Songs

The Prophets, intended as the final act of The Eternal Road, was the last work that Kurt Weill composed in Europe and his last extensive setting in German before personally and professionally adopting the language of his new home, America. Musically, he drew on all his previous great works, from Mahagonny and The Seven Deadly Sins to his Second Symphony, at the same time foreshadowing some of his later works for Broadway. In 1998 David Drew devised the concert adaptation of this act, of which this is the first recording. The Four Walt Whitman Songs, meanwhile, were a product of the war years and reveal Weill at his most touchingly American, fusing German Lied with American theatre, Berlin with Brooklyn.