Film Composers in the Concert Hall, Part 1

This is the first in a series of a columns about music by well-known film composers written not for the screen but for the concert hall. Where to start? It seems only fitting to begin with Erich Wolfgang Korngold, whose 100th birthday was celebrated on May 29 of this year. (Although it is a bit erroneous to consider Korngold a film composer who wrote music for the concert hall, since his situation was exactly the reverse.)

One of the most remarkable child prodigies of this century. Korngold was playing the piano by the age of three and at 10 he played his cantata Gold for Mahler, who recommended he study with Zemlinsky. A variety of works followed, including a ballet, a piano trio, a piano sonata, various orchestral pieces, and two operas premiered at age 18.

The Sinfonietta, an ambitious, large-scale orchestral work written at 15, prompted Richard Strauss to remark, "One's first reaction that these compositions are by an adolescent boy are those of awe and fear: this firmness of style, this sovereignty of form, this individual expression, this harmonic structure—it is really amazing." The work shows off the opulent orchestration (often including piano, harp, celeste and vibraphone in addition to a large orchestra) and melodic gift for which Korngold would become known. There is a recent recording by the Dallas Symphony, and the piece is also represented on the first volume of a four CD set on CPO Records, performed by conductor Werner Andreas Albert and the Northwest German Philharmonic. (Ranging from decent to outstanding, these CDs provide a nice survey of the composer's output and represent the only available recordings of some of the lesser-known pieces.)

Korngold achieved his greatest pre-Hollywood fame as an operatic composer. Violanta, Die Tote Stadt and Das Wunder der Heliane are all represented on CD. Most of the techniques Korngold would employ in his film scores were developed in these musical theater works.

Also foreshadowing the composer's success in Hollywood, the incidental music to Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, scored for a small orchestra featuring harmonium, is one of the composer's most enchanting creations. There have been several recordings, including one on the aforementioned CPO set.

Utterly delightful is the 1928 Baby Serenade, written after the birth of Korngold's second son (George Korngold, who later became a well-known record producer). Including banjo and a trio of saxophones, the opening movement is perhaps the Austrian composer's idea of what American jazz might be like; the remainder of the piece includes a Viennese waltz, a short march, a scherzo and a lullaby minuet. A fine recording is included on Volume 3 of the CPO set.

During the years he spent composing film scores in Hollywood, Korngold largely stopped writing music for the stage and concert hall. It was violinist Bronislaw Huberman who persuaded Korngold to write a concerto for his instrument, but Huberman would not commit to a premiere and none other than Jascha Heifetz introduced the work on February 15, 1947, with Vladimir Golschmann conducting the Saint Louis Symphony. For his Robin Hood score, Korngold had reused thematic material from an early concert overture, Sursum Corda; for this violin concerto, composed in 1945, he reversed the process, using melodies from four different film scores. The expansive first theme of the opening movement comes from the film Another Dawn (1937); the lyrical second subject is from Juárez (1939), a theme associated with a character played by Bette Davis. The G major tune of the second movement is the love theme from Anthony Adverse (1936), spun out by the solo violin after a brief orchestral introduction; the misterioso second subject is not of cinematic origin. The energetic finale is a theme and variations, although the theme—the title music from The Prince and the Pauper (1937)—is not heard until after the second variation.

The violin concerto has gone on to become the most widely performed of all Korngold's concert music. Heifetz' RCA recording is available on a mid-price CD (indispensable since it is coupled with a knockout performance of the Rozsa concerto) and there have been several recent recordings. The best of these features soloist Gil Shaham with Andre; Previn and the London Symphony; it not only offers the beautiful concerto of Samuel Barber but Korngold's delightful violin and piano version of his Much Ado About Nothing suite (with Previn at the keyboard).

Korngold's masterpiece is the Symphony in F# Major. While recognizably inhabiting the sound world shared by all of his orchestral music, the dissonant and percussive opening immediately signals this as the darkest piece in the composer's output. The long-lined first theme is stated by clarinet, but soon taken up by declamatory horns. The second movement is whirlwind scherzo with a heroic second-subject horn theme and a more relaxed trio. The slow movement is one of the composer's most expansive creations. A relatively cheerful rondo concludes the work. Korngold dedicated the piece to the memory of FDR. Several prominent conductors promised to take it up, but there was only one (disastrous) performance of the work during the composer's lifetime and the symphony was largely forgotten until Rudolph Kempe recorded it in 1972. It is also available on CPO and there is a recent EMI CD with Franz Welser-Möst and the Philadelphia Orchestra, about which I have read good things. But if I were to recommend a recording of this piece it would be Sir Edward Downes' on Chandos. Downes comes closest to matching the ideal performance I have imagined but never heard realized and Chandos couples the lengthy work with Korngold's ravishingly beautiful Abschiedlieder (Songs of Farewell), written during the First World War. The songs look backward to Mahler (briefly quoting the Fourth Symphony) and forward to Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs.

There is much that has been left out of this brief survey (and we've barely touched upon any of the chamber music, songs and solo piano works) but the pieces and recordings mentioned above should provide a nice introduction to Korngold's orchestral output.

Next up: Miklos Rozsa.