January 8-14, 2004

music

Lemper Fi

The couple behind us audibly drew breath as Ute Lemper took the Kimmel's stage, whether in awe of her tight red velvet dress or in disapproval of the microphone clutched in her hand, it is hard to say. Equal parts Broadway belter, cabaret ironist and pop crossover (a description of her career that doubles for her voice), Lemper took on Weill and Brecht's Seven Deadly Sins with controlled passion, her shoulders twitching to the music, commanding the stage even when she was sitting down and silent. Yet somehow Lemper and the Orchestra never reached an accord, remaining slightly apart just as her amplified voice seemed to hover 10 feet off the stage. An endorsement of the "the laws that make us rich and happy," Brecht's libretto is positively irony-sodden, yet the Orchestra never arched so much as a collective brow. (Perhaps I'm asking them to Mickey-Mouse what should remain implicit, but it seemed as if Lemper could have used a few flourishes to goad her onward as well.) The underwhelming first half, though, laid the ground for a sprightly post-intermission program, composed of Haydn's Symphony No. 98 and the Suite from Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier.

—Sam Adams