Kurt Weill was born in Dessau in 1900 and studied at the Berlin Musihhochschule with Humperdinck and then later and privately with Busoni. He was also one of a number of composers who had to flee Germany once the Nazis started to carry out their atrocities, indeed Weill had more than most to fear as not only was he a Jew but he had collaborated with Berthold Brecht in works some of which had lampooned the Nazis and their leader and cronies. His career may therefore be split between his mother country which he left in 1933 and America where he settled in 1935 and died in 1950. The earliest work in this collection is the Concerto for violin and wind orchestra written in 1924 and is clearly influenced by his study of atonality developed by Schoenberg. Three years later he became Brecht’s composer and together they produced Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) in 1928, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rise and Fall of the City Mahagonny) in 1930 – the Suite prepared by his champion, Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg, is included in this set – and Die sieben Todsünden (The Seven Deadly Sins) in 1933 which also is included. The same year he also wrote his second symphony.

Once in America he became a leading composer of Broadway Musicals and extracts from two of them complete the collection. One of his main performers was his wife, Lotte Lenya, whose characteristic voice made many of his songs standards of the popular song repertory; she was also a character actress, who could forget her as the villainous Rosa Klebb, with the spike in her shoe, in the James Bond film: From Russia with Love?