A fantasy concert is a concert that you would like to go to but it has never (to your knowledge) happened. This is one such concert that revolves around the work of Erich Korngold. It begins with an overture to the score of a 1940 film The Sea Hawk, continues with his exquisite violin concerto, played here by Nicola Benedetti, and ends with his one and only Symphony. 

Programme:-

Overture to The Seahawk

Violin Concerto in D, Op. 35

Interval………a glass of bubbly perhaps

Symphony in F♯ major, Op. 40

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Erich Wolfgang Korngold (May 29, 1897 – November 29, 1957) was an Austrian-born composer and conductor born to a Jewish family in Brünn, Austria-Hungary (present-day Brno, Czechia). A child prodigy, Erich could play four-hand piano arrangements alongside his father at age five. He was also able to reproduce any melody he heard on the piano, along with playing complete and elaborate chords. By age seven, he was writing original music. He ended up becoming one of the most important and influential composers in Hollywood history and the first composer of international stature to write Hollywood scores.

When he was 11, his ballet Der Schneemann (The Snowman), became a sensation in Vienna and soon after that Erich played his cantata Gold for Gustav Mahler. Mahler hailed him a “musical genius” and he recommended he study with composer Alexander von Zemlinsky. Richard Strauss also spoke highly of the youth, and along with Mahler told Korngold’s father there was no benefit in having his son enrol in a music conservatory since his abilities were already years ahead of what he could learn there. His Second Piano Sonata which he wrote at age 13 was played throughout Europe by Artur Schnabel. His one-act operas Violanta and Der Ring des Polykrates were premiered in Munich in 1916, conducted by Bruno Walter and at age 23, his opera Die tote Stadt (The Dead City) premiered in Hamburg and Cologne. In 1921 he conducted the Hamburg Opera and during those 1920s he re-orchestrated, re-arranged and nearly re-composed, for the theater, operettas by Johann Strauss II. By 1931 he was a professor of music at Vienna State Academy.

At the request of director Max Reinhardt, and due to the rise of the Nazi regime, Korngold moved to the U.S. in 1934 to write music scores for films. His first was Reinhardt’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935), which was well received by critics. He subsequently wrote scores for such films as Captain Blood (1935), which helped boost the career of its starring newcomer, Errol Flynn. His score for Anthony Adverse (1936) won an Oscar, and was followed two years later with another Oscar for The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn (again) and Olivia de Havilland.

The Sea Hawk was Korngold’s last score for swashbuckler films, all of which had starred Errol Flynn. It is widely regarded as one of Korngold’s best. The film ran two hours and six minutes and was one of the longest films he ever worked on. It includes symphonic score in all but twenty minutes. It was also his tenth original score in less than six years.

In the final duel between Thorpe and Wolfingham, MacDonald states that “Korngold’s breathlessly fast-paced music helps to make this one of the most exciting swordfights in cinema history.” While Behlmer describes the duel scene as a “tour de force of rhythmic energy and exactitude.”

Overall, he wrote the score for 16 Hollywood films, receiving two more Oscar nominations. Along with Max Steiner and Alfred Newman, he is one of the founders of film music. Although his late classical Romantic compositions were no longer as popular when he died in 1957, his music underwent a resurgence of interest in the 1970s beginning with the release of the album The Sea Hawk: the Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1972). This album was hugely popular and ignited interest in other film music of his (and other composers like Steiner) and in his concert music, which often incorporated popular themes from his film scores, an example being the Violin Concerto in D, Op. 35 that we hear in this fantasy concert as Nicola Benedetti plays Korngold’s Violin Concerto with The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kiril Karabits, with an encore of the composer’s own arrangement for violin of his aria “Mariettas Lied” from Die tote Stadt. 

The Symphony in F-sharp, Op. 40, is the only such work by Korngold, although as a teenager in 1912 he had written a Sinfonietta, his Op. 5. Using a theme from the 1939 film The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. The symphony was completed in 1952 and dedicated to the memory of American president Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had died seven years earlier. In 1959, two years after Korngold’s death,  the Greek conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos wrote: “All my life I have searched for the perfect modern work. In this symphony I have found it. I shall perform it the next season.” Unfortunately Mitropoulos’s death intervened, and in fact the symphony did not enjoy its first concert outing until 27 November 1972, in Munich under Rudolf Kempe. More recently the work has entered the repertoire with a number of CD recordings. The Recording here is by The Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie conducted by Werner Andreas Albert.

• I: Moderato, ma energico 00:00
• II: Scherzo: Allegro molto 16:20
• III: Adagio – Lento 26:26
• IV: Finale: Allegro gaio 41:35

The slow third movement is particularly brilliant and beautiful.

Korngold lived at 9936 Toluca Lake Avenue, Toluca Lake, Los Angeles, a few blocks from Warner Brothers Studio, where he worked. In October 1956 he suffered a severe stroke and although he partially recovered, he had many health issues before his death on 29th November at the age of 60, the following year.

It was Pam’s cousin Michael, a music journalist and composer, who introduced me to Korngold’s music. I am so glad that he did.

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Overture to The Seahawk

Violin Concerto in D, Op. 35

Symphony in F♯ major, Op. 40