Here’s something rather special and just a little bit different. In Kurt Weill’s Youkali, a haunting French setting with words by Roger Fernay, the protagonist imagines a land of heart’s desire that somehow is always out of reach: “It is happiness, it is pleasure, but it is a dream, a folly. There is no Youkali!”

It’s the starting point for Katie Bray’s seductive and enthralling odyssey, a journey through Weill’s life and music, drawing parallels between the exiled German composer’s chameleon-like reinventions in Paris and the United States and the search for a socialist utopia he could never attain. 

A debate has been raging seemingly forever about what kind of voice should sing Weill, ramping up after the death of Lotte Lenya when the estate decreed that the composer had wanted operatic voices in works that had previously been commanded by Lenya’s increasingly gravelly mezzo. Even Ute Lemper fell foul. Those who find the classical voice too prim and proper for this music should take a listen to Bray. The British mezzo-soprano never betrays her operatic roots yet somehow sounds perfectly suited to this material, whether in the 1920s Berlin world of The Threepenny Opera or the American Musicals of the 1940s.

The recital opens with the Barbarasong from The Threepenny Opera in which Polly Peachum recounts her experiences with a series of duplicitous men. Bray manages the transition from put-upon young girl to hard-nosed woman with style while William Vann’s accompaniment is appropriately bright and brittle. The way the accordion creeps in alongside the piano sets the mood for more richly accompanied songs ahead.

The cabaret songs feature sweetness and sadness in equal measure, for example in the nostalgic Berlin im Licht with Bray’s delicately touched-in top notes and the poignant Complainte de la Seine where her rich middle register and mastery of the French language come to the fore (its counterpart, Je ne t’aime pas, is sung with ravishingly tone and enormous emotional concentration). Her diction throughout is laser-focused, her instinct about where to slip into the spoken word is assured. Surabaya Johnny, sung in cutglass English could easily not come off, but Bray nails it with an intense understanding of both text and subtext.

The Broadway songs find her easing back slightly, though never cheating us of her vocal richness. Buddy on the Nightshift swings effortlessly, with double bass adding a layer of comfort. Speak Low and My Ship, both bittersweet Weill classics, benefit from Bray’s ability to spin a long lyrical line without smudging a syllable.

Functioning as a kind of glue between songs, or perhaps better thought of as scene-change music, are a series of improvisations around the Youkali tune. Far from holding up the action, they lead the listener on through Weill’s various reinventions, setting us up for the Holy Grail, saved until last, which is Youkali itself. Suffice it to say, it’s worth the wait, Bray’s combination of velvet, Carmen-like vocals and a deep identification with its message of longing and disillusionment ensures she lands it in style.

Recorded in the rich, natural acoustic of St George’s, Harrow, this disc is a joy from beginning to end.

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Composer: Weill
Work: In Search of Youkali
Performers: Katie Bray ms, William Vann p, Murray Grainger acc, Marianne Schofield db
Label: Chandos CHAN20359