Chandos to Release New Korngold Album

courtesy of Naxos of America

One week from today the British label Chandos Records will release an album devoted entirely to the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The featured performer on this album is violinist Andrew Haveron, heard first as soloist in a performance of the Opus 35 violin concerto in D major and then as first violinist in the Opus 10 string sextet, also in D major. Haveron performs the concerto with the Irish RTÉ (Raidió Teilifís Éireann) Concert Orchestra, one of two resident ensembles with the Irish national broadcasting station, conducted by John Wilson. As may be expected, Amazon.com is currently taking pre-orders for this new release.

We are now a few generations removed from those that dismissed Korngold as “only a film composer” with a penchant for thick layers of schmaltz. Indeed, even that adverb “only” is inappropriate. More accurately, Korngold was one of three composers (the others being Max Steiner and Alfred Newman) who founded the genre of film music as we now know it, making it an integral part of the viewing experience, rather than mere accompaniment. Korngold was first brought to Hollywood by the stage and film director Max Reinhardt, one of the first Europeans to escape the rise of the Nazis.

Between 1934 and 1938, Korngold divided his time between Austria and Hollywood. However, in 1938 he was invited to compose the music for The Adventures of Robin Hood. Shortly after that invitation, the Nazis invaded Austria. When his house in Vienna was confiscated, Korngold knew that he had better “get out of town;” and he became one of those residents that saw the greater Los Angeles area as “Weimar on the Pacific.” (The circumstances behind that move would later surface when Korngold would tell anyone that asked that Robin Hood had saved him from the Nazis.)

The violin concerto was begun in 1937, but it was not completed until 1945. There had been a tendency to dismiss it as movie music without the movie. To be fair, many of the themes were drawn from film scores; and the Wikipedia page for this concerto provides a valuable enumeration of all of those sources. Having seen many of those films (thanks, primarily, to Turner Classic Movies), I can state with authority that these themes sound much better in the foreground of a concert setting than they do on a soundtrack! After all, Ives had no trouble appropriating tunes from his everyday life, turning them into thoroughly engaging listening experiences; so we can hardly criticize Korngold for doing the same thing!

The concerto was given its first performance in 1947 with Jascha Heifetz as soloist, and it was subsequently released as a recording by RCA. However, when the “academic bullies” of the Fifties determined that tonality was destined for the “ash heap of history,” Korngold and all of his works fell into disrepute. It has only been in the last few decades that a new generation of violinists has rediscovered Opus 35 and made it part of repertoire. As a result, there is now no shortage of recordings of Opus 35; but I am happy to report that Haveron can definitely rub shoulders with all of the more familiar violinists in that group.

Nevertheless, his efforts are far more significant by virtue of his decision to include the Opus 10 sextet on this album. Adding both a second viola and a second cello to a string quartet significantly expands the palette of sonorities and richness of expression. Johannes Brahms was so drawn to that expressiveness that he composed two sextets, Opus 18 in B-flat major and Opus 36 in G major. A generation later, it is hard to imagine Arnold Schoenberg interpreting Richard Dehmel’s “Verklärte Nacht” (transfigured night) poem with only a string quartet at his disposal.

Schoenberg composed his sextet in 1899, about fifteen years before Korngold’s. Curiously, Gustav Mahler suggested that Korngold study with Alexander von Zemlinsky in 1909, when Korngold was about eight years old. Zemlinsky was probably Schoenberg’s most influential teacher prior to his undertaking “Verklärte Nacht;” and the music can easily be taken as encoding his passion for Zemlinsky’s sister Mathilde. However, Korngold seems to have been guided less by Zemlinsky and more by his familiarity with the music of Richard Strauss.

Korngold was still a teenager when he composed his Opus 10 sextet. There is little (if any) sign of the influence (or, for that matter, awareness) of Schoenberg. Brahms and Zemlinsky is are more likely candidates. However, if one disregarded chronology, one might easily describe Opus 10 as a “mature” composition extending beyond the expressiveness of the youthful Brahms. (Note, by the way, that many years later, in the early Forties, Strauss would decide to begin his one-act opera “Capriccio” with a string sextet.)

On this new Chandos recording, Haveron performs with and leads his colleagues in the Sinfonia of London Chamber Ensemble. He is joined by Magnus Johnston on second violin, violists James Boyd and Joel Hunter, and cellists Jonathan Aasgaard and Pierre Doumenge. This is a performance in which one can appreciate both structural and rhetorical influences from the nineteenth century. At the same time, however, the young Korngold is determined to find his own voice and bring it to the listener front-and-center. This is a far cry from music that can be dismissed as mere juvenilia; and, given the growing popularity of the Opus 35 violin concerto, this, is the selection on the album that provides the listener with a highly satisfying journey of discovery.