Lonely House review – noir-shaded selection of Kurt Weill’s hits from exile
Old College Quad, Edinburgh
Katharine Mehrling delivers the German master’s songs in ravishing style, accompanied with restraint by pianist Barrie Kosky.
Sitting atop the grand piano, Katharine Mehrling is picked out in a single spotlight, her blond hair and velvet dress emphasising the contrast between light and shade. It could be the closing image of a black-and-white movie.
Mehrling’s tones are warm and assured, her range comfortably embracing everything from cabaret chanteuse on Le Grand Lustucru to sharp-talking propagandist on the fidgety Schickelgruber, an anti-Hitler polemic.
On the tongue-twisting Tchaikovsky, she switches the words to rhyme with “Barrie Kosky”, while the pianist hits the keys with the nervous urgency of a man at a typewriter. His settings are typically spare and restrained, giving the singer all the room she needs for a plangent and seductive show.