WEIMAR & BACK – Melinda Hughes (NIMBUS ALLIANCE – NI 6367)
Star rating: 3.5 stars
Celebrating the music and culture of the Weimar interwar period, Weimar & Back is a collection of satirical songs by Hollaender, Spoliansky, Heymann, Weill and Hughes & Limb.
According to Barry Humphries, an exponent of the genre, the music is full of free-spirited, fun-loving gaiety and energy yet also shot through with world-weary cynicism and a sense of impending doom ultimately fulfilled by the rise of Nazism. I don’t think I would be wrong in saying this is going to appeal to a very niche audience.
Tracks include: ‘In Berlin’; ‘Monotonous Night’; ‘Das Lila Lied’; ‘All the Best Men Are Gay’; ‘Where a Stolperstein Stands’; ‘Britannia Waives the Rules’; and ‘Der mensch muss eine Heimat haben Mischa Spoliansky’.
Melinda Hughes has written some of the songs featured on this CD with her pianist Jeremy Limb in the style of the Weimar period and they are mixed with songs from that time. Some work better than others.
From the press release, I see that Hughes has been performing a one-woman show called Margo: Half woman, Half Beast which is about Margo Lion, a celebrated German cabaret star of the 1930s. It may be that putting these tracks on stage in the cabaret style for which they are intended may give more credence to them than simply listening to them on CD.
As I’ve already said, this will appeal to a niche market and there is no doubting that both Melinda Hughes and Jeremy Limb are exceptionally talented artists.
Nick Wakeham
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