Search - Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Werner Andreas Albert, Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie :: Korngold: Orchestral Works, Vol. 4

The Best of Late Korngold

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 03/10/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is the last of a four-volume series of orchestral music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) with Werner Andreas Albert conducting the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie on the cpo label. It was issued more than ten years ago and yet had not had a review here on Amazon. Since it's one of my favorite recordings of Korngold's music, I thought I would do the honors. 'Theme and Variations, Op. 42' and 'Straussiana' were written in the early 1950s for American student orchestras to play. In spite of somewhat simplified writing for the individual instruments they retain the typical Korngoldian melodic and orchestral sound. The 'Theme' is original but sounds like an Irish folk melody. The tune is winning and the orchestration is imaginative; this eight-minute piece is brilliantly effective which reminds us, in its lightness, of the insouciant music Korngold wrote for movies like 'Robin Hood.' As for 'Straussiana', it is a charming seven-minute setting of unfamiliar melodies of Johann Strauss (primarily from his mostly-forgotten operetta 'Ritter Pazman'). The big piece here is Korngold's late Symphony in F Sharp, Op. 40. Also written in the 1950s it is altogether different than earlier 'serious' music in that there are elements of angst and sadness not often heard in his music. The first movement, a large and complex sonata-form movement, is craggy and bold, with leaping melodic figures and granitic added-note chords. One knows it is Korngold, though, because of the characteristic use of divided strings and of glittering harps, celesta, piano and bells and his beloved helden-horns. There is melodic distinction throughout the symphony. The Scherzo is a whirling tarantella filled with orchestral bustle and glinting wind and percussion. The symphony's emotional heart is in the Adagio-Lento movement. It is unlike anything I've ever heard by Korngold and I am tempted to suggest that it is autobiographical in its world-weary sadness. Korngold, of course, had been a fêted child prodigy and a renowned opera composer but in the second half of his life, as a Jewish emigrant from Hitler's Austria, he had come down in the world, at least as far as 'serious' music is concerned, to become a movie music composer. Granted, he was famous and wealthy and given a certain acclaim in America, but he never again, even after World War II, regained the respect as a serious composer he had once had in the capitals of Europe. It is well-known that this depressed him. And I believe that this third movement is an expression of that sadness. One is tempted to say it is his 'Heldenleben.' And it is emotionally shattering. One is reminded of the slow movements of both Mahler's and Bruckner's Ninth Symphonies. But then in the Fourth movement, Korngold pulls himself together, as it were, and writes an insouciant, even cocky finale in which one can picture the swashbuckling Errol Flynn. Frankly, when I listen to this symphony I tend to stop it after the third movement. It's not that I don't think the fourth movement is good; it is. But it feels a bit tacked-on. Or maybe it's Korngold whistling in the graveyard.I've heard Kempe's and Previn's recordings of the Symphony and feel that this performance holds its own quite nicely with them; it may not be quite as silken, but in the first movement, at least, and probably in the third, that is no loss. Those movements benefit from a rawer approach. It is time for Korngold's reputation as a significant composer to be fully resurrected. He himself felt his movie scores were 'operas without words,' but even he often took themes from his film music and incorporated them into his 'serious' music as if trying to put them in a more fitting setting; his violin concerto, for instance, quotes from no less than four of his film scores. One can certainly say that his easily identifiable style is discernible in both his film and concert music. And to the charge that his music always sounds like movie music, one must be reminded that he virtually invented the genre as we know it. One could say that composers like Steiner, Waxman, Tiomkin, John Williams, et al. were following in his footsteps. For anyone wanting to discover what Korngold was writing late in his career, one could not do better than listen to this disc. TT=68:02Scott Morrison"