Ulrich Tukur – Mezzanotte (2010)

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Ulrich Tukur – Mezzanotte (2010)

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Ulrich Tukur – Mezzanotte
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 330 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Deutsche Grammophon # 477 8796 | Country/Year: Germany 2010
Genre: Pop, Jazz | Style: Chanson

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Ulrich Tukur – Mezzanotte (2010)

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Ulrich Tukur – Mezzanotte (2010)

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Ulrich Tukur – Mezzanotte (2010)

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Mezzanotte – Night Songs

What the night doesn’t have, it fabricates – apparitions or (at least) wraithlike moths, thousands of eyes and cats – all of them grey. And songs suitable for every dark side or mood, from starlight’s glitter to midnight’s blackness. Deciding between all those songs and stories would already be a challenge. Add to that a desire for making discoveries, profiling nearly forgotten gems of the lied, song, chanson and canzone cultures along with the standards, and the choice becomes almost impossible. Nonetheless, Ulrich Tukur and his comrades-in-arms on this album, under the direction of Lutz Krajenski, have met the challenge with flying colours. “The night is a dark screen”, says Tukur between recording sessions of Mezzanotte, after having, true to form, spent the night celebrating at the legendary Silbersack bar in Hamburg’s Reeperbahn. The singing actor moves from “the parallel world of the night” via the “truths beyond daily life” into a euphoric rant: “The most bizarre things happen at night”, he says emphatically. “The night is electrifying, and it represents so much: love, death, crime, intoxication . . . Those are such amazing subjects, which can all be subsumed under the word ‘night’. No wonder it’s been rhapsodized, poeticized and set to music ad infinitum.”

For some time, Ulrich Tukur had already harboured the idea of compiling a concert- and CD-length programme – after all, he isn’t known only as a prize-winning actor,but also as a singer, as a musical story-teller, and even as the honorary president of the choir at Montepiano in Tuscany. He had actually intended to produce these “night songs” with his own band, the Rhythmus Boys, but it soon morphed into something more elaborate: armed with keyboarder Lutz Krajenski – who also arranges for the German jazz singer Roger Cicero and leads his big band – and backed up by a dozen or so fabulous musicians, Tukur charged into the adventure with nearly 20 numbers. The result – released in conjunction with his new stage programme, a “kaleidoscope of life’s nocturnal illusions” in words, action and song, in which Tukur shines in the multiple role of flaneur, seducer and gambler, by turns crazy, desperate and nostalgic – is this remarkable album of his favourite songs about the night.

“I just went scrounging”, mumbles Tukur nonchalantly, as though he hadn’t amassed a 78 rpm collection of this music numbering some 2000 records and hadn’t acquired a vast knowledge of the material. “The main thing was finding songs whose melodies I liked and which had to do with night in some poetic and beautiful way. And, naturally, I had to be able to sing them. After all, I don’t have a big, trained voice. It isn’t particularly well suited to big band numbers, alas, but it is quite a good fit for the chansons and cabaret pieces from the first half of the last century.”

In a sense Ulrich Tukur is also drawing connections here that go all the way back to the beginning of his acting career. His story is probably familiar enough by now but, because it’s such a good story, worth retelling, if only in capsule form. He was born in the Sputnik year of 1957 in the central German town of Viernheim, not far from Mannheim and Heidelberg. After graduating from high school in Boston and passing his secondary-school exams near Hanover, he studied German and English literature and history at Tübingen University. “Acting never interested me”, Tukur says. “I came from a very middle-class family. When I was seven, I started taking piano lessons, which I found tremendously boring – until I pinched a volume of boogie-woogie in a shop. I had no money, but I absolutely wanted that music. There was hell to pay when they found me out – a slap in the face from my mother and another from the piano teacher! Later I was given a whole stack of 78s by my aunt. ‘Mondnacht auf Cuba’ was my first record. My classmates were listening to the Beatles and Creedence Clearwater Revival, while I favoured Rudy Vallee and Eric Helgar.” As a student in Tübingen, Tukur was already singing old German pop songs on the pedestrian street with his accordion and a friend. Their routine, which the pair also trotted out at bank openings and senior citizens’ events, came to be dubbed “Mucous and Makeshift Jazz. Often equalled, never imitated: the Floyd Floodlight Foyer Band”. That he soon turned to acting – thanks to two crucial encounters with the French-German film and TV star Dominique Horwitz – is now history. But in Mezzanotte it is unmistakable that, even after winning the Bavarian Film Prize and Golden Camera (German television award), with celebrated roles in films like The Lives of Others, The White Ribbon, John Rabe, Solaris and Séraphine, Ulrich Tukur still feels unwavering passion for this music.

“I had to learn all the new songs”, he admits, “especially the French ones: J'ai peur de coucher tout seul and Le Soleil et la lune. I didn’t even know Vecchio Frack,though it was a big hit for Domenico Modugno, maybe his most popular song in Italy.” It was this dramatic piece about an old man in tails on the verge of taking his own life that ultimately inspired the making of Mezzanotte and became a recurring motif in Ulrich Tukur’s stage programme. From there, his charming tenor with its attractive patina went on to probe Werner Bochmann’s Die kleine Stadt will schlafen geh’n and the Coco Schumann hit Ausgerechnet heute Abend.

Tukur’s discoveries here include Wera and Alexander von Chevtschenko’s Hörst du das Meer. “I heard it for the first time on a 78”, the interpreter relates, “sung by Maria von Schmedes. Incredibly schmaltzy – about the sea, the night and the wind – but so beautiful.” On Mezzanotte, Hörst du das Meer is a heart-rending duet with Margot Hielscher, one of Germany’s most popular film stars of the 1940s and 50s. “To sing this piece with her was, of course, something very special,” Tukur recalls. “She’s now over 90 and lives alone in a villa in Munich. She sang for Benny Goodman and Leonard Bernstein, and the writer Erich Kästner was said to have taken a powerful interest in her. She sings her part very simply – it’s extremely moving and totally lovely.”

In between those old appealing songs of the night there are also two brand-new ones. Not only did Tukur write the music for the perversely beautiful street ballad of Willy Williams. He also wrote the text, in the style of Bertolt Brecht’s handling of the murder story surrounding Johann Apfelböck – though it was actually made for domestic consumption, intended for his daughter Lili, who grew up in the USA (or was it her sister Marleen?). Die Großstadt träumt is “an expressionist big-city lyric in the tradition of the German-Jewish poet Mascha Kaléko”, with a text by Tukur and music by Lutz Krajenski. “Mr. Lutz, the orchestra leader – this man isn’t just an incredible pro”, Tukur enthuses, “but also highly sympathetic and affirmative. He’s done some great arranging and composing here.”

Mezzanotte – Night Songs is indeed a joint effort, but one in which Ulrich Tukur as performer and impresario is clearly the dominant personality. “I’m very happy that the idea and the music have come together so well”, says the self-styled night person. “I’m also really glad that we’ve brought the whole thing off in so many languages. I feel right at home in English and German, while in the French and Italian songs you can hear that a German is singing. But that’s OK, too.” He strokes his chin with a thoughtful expression, then adds: “Only we haven’t quite stuck to the theme: Illusions isn’t a night song. But you can also create illusions at night that don’t evaporate by daylight. And, of course, in Billy Wilder’s A Foreign Affair Marlene Dietrich sings her marvellous version of the song at a night club. So there . . . it does fit in after all!” With that, the singing actor laughs, quotes Friedrich Hollaender’s classic text – “Want to buy some illusions, slightly used, second-hand?” – and disappears into the night.

Götz Bühler
5/2010 deutschegrammophon