This performance was part of the Mayfair festival, a new event aimed at
raising money for charities (a day-centre for homeless people and RNIB) in
a very superior part of London. All the performances take place in the
Mayfair Theatre, which is inside the Inter-Continental hotel, behind Green
Park tube station. The theatre, which has just been renovated and reopened
after many years, is small, seating about 180, and simple but comfortable.

The festival also included the performances of Viardot's Cendrillon that
Rodney Milnes reviewed in the London Times. (I'm afraid I skipped this
because as a former comp lit student I assumed the equivalence of all
romance languages and thought it was Rossini, which is on my
not-with-a-bargepole list.) There is a bel canto brunch concert and a jazz
evening (ahem, Georgie Fame) on Saturday 6Feb98.

I can't find much detail about Eva Meier, but she's clearly a first-rate
singing actress and not apparently from Berlin, to judge from her accent.
This evening, billed as inter-war German carabet, consisted entirely of
Brecht/Weill and related standards, superbly performed. Meier used a
microphone up close, but otherwise her singing could be called historically
informed. Her technique was similar (without the projection) to the young
Lotte Lenya's, or to any of the thoroughly trained singing actors in
Brecht's company. She's a true soprano, with very little husk in her lower
range, but she doesn't have a truly musical voice. Her intonation was
sometimes haywire, perhaps deliberately to suggest abandon in, for example,
the Mandalay song.

But Meier's performance was superbly theatrical. She used only the simplest
staging: a chair, standing stage centre in a spot, moving around downstage.
And her gestures were conventional and comparatively restrained. But she
used vast amounts of vocal expression. She moved easily between torchy
numbers (the Barbara Song, Bilbao Song, a slightly brisk Nanna's Song,
Subaraya Johnny), broad burlesque (Der deutscher Mann, Tamerlan -- a
semi-grown up version of I'm in love with Attila the Hun -- , Jakob
Apfelboeck -- a gruesomely funny song about a boy who kills his parents)
and classic Brechtian satire (Ballade der sexuelle Hoerigkeit, Lied des
Haendlers -- untypically tedious, Robyn Archer managed to make it gross).

Meier also got the intense sadness of Fennimore's song, Ich bin eine arme
Verwandte from Der Silbersee and the strange irony of the crude words and
enigmatic, plainchant-like music of the Brecht/Eisler Mutter Beimlen. She
ended with two lullabies and Lied von der Moldau, all by Brecht and Eisler,
and again found deep emotion in the speech-like setting of the lullabies
and the pseudo-folksong of the Moldau (ripped off from Ma Vlast). As this
was a bit melancholy to end, she did the Mandalay song and the one with
"cash makes you randy" as encores.

Meier sang mainly in German. This was fine with a programme that consisted
almost entirely of familiar songs, and her delivery left no doubt what each
song was about. The small number of English translations she used were of
variable quality. (I didn't recognise any of them, except "cash makes you
randy", which Maria Friedman did at the Proms.) She used them effectively,
though, for Song of the inadequacy of human endeavour, which is just plain
difficult in either language, to ease in the audience in her first number,
and for variety in Bilbao, which goes on a bit. Her English delivery was
pretty good, but I'd take the German any day.

The superb, very young accompanist Florian Uhlig made a major contribution
to the evening. Nonchalantly throwing music on the floor when he'd finished
with it, he played with a style as stunning as Meier's own, and also joined
in the theatrical presentation, for example as a "play it again Joe" piano
player in Bilbao. It says in the programme that he's giving masterclasses
at the age of twenty four. I'm not surprised after hearing him.

I was hoping for some real over-the-top, un-right-on cabaret material on
the programme, similar to what's on Ute Lemper's Entartete Musik CD.
Although there wasn't any, this got a fairly good mix of high and low
style. The set lasted an hour and a half (Meier asked to perform without
the announced interval), which some people found too long. I could have
listened to her all night, especially if she'd done some of the really rude
ones.