Ferruccio Busoni, Kurt Weill's revered mentor and teacher at the Prussian Academy of the Arts, often found his "serious'' compositions problematical. Anton Webern is reported to have asked in dismay: "Where in Weill can you find anything of our great Austro-German tradition?'' Finally, Arnold Schoenberg is reputed by Virgil Thomson to have stated: "Franz Lehar, yes ... Weill, no. His is the only music in the world in which I can find no quality at all." Given these assessments by three undeniably formidable 20th-century composers, and knowing Kurt Weill's art as most of us do, from his most famous (or infamous, depending on one's point of view) Berlin­period theater pieces -- The Threepenny Opera and/or The Rise and Fall of Mahagonny -- I ask in all candor: Would you buy a symphony from this man?