This second volume
of Korngold’s orchestral music (the
first is CD DCA 1074) spans both his
very first and last works. A precocious
boy composer - aged 13 when his ballet
The Snowman was staged in the
Vienna Court Opera in 1910, orchestrated
by Zemlinsky but prompted by the Wunderkind
- it’s hard for him to escape the shadow
of Richard Strauss, and frankly he never
does. Der Rosenkavalier is a
computer worm burrowing into his musical
hard drive (Wagner is of course a given)
but the result is a satisfying mix of
lush textures and soaring melodies.
He went on to write many film scores,
and these early compositions, written
twenty years before Al Jolson, provide
many a signpost to his later career
in America, where he fled from Nazi
persecution in the 1930s. Meanwhile
his opera Die tote Stadt had
scored a deserved triumph in 1920 and
did his reputation no harm in Austria
and further afield.
The Märchenbilder
(Fairytale pictures) were
originally seven piano pieces, which
Korngold orchestrated (only six have
survived), while the Schauspiel
overture (Overture to a Drama)
was orchestral in concept from the outset
and may have been inspired by a Shakespeare
play. It received a fabulous baptism
when Nikisch gave its first performance
in Leipzig on 14 December 1911, and
was then taken up by a galaxy of top
conductors, in Europe by Muck, Busch,
Furtwängler, Mengelberg and Steinbach,
while in Britain Wood did it at the
1912 Promenade Concerts.
His first opera (written
at 16) was a short comedy (Der Ring
des Polykrates) to which he added
Violanta, a full-blooded tale
of lust as a companion piece. Schrecker,
von Schillings and Zemlinsky were writing
such pieces taken from romantic Renaissance
tragedies, so it is hardly surprising
that Korngold should be drawn to such
sources under their influence. The music
of this by-now 17 year-old was still
in the hands of the greatest conductors
of the day: in the case of Violanta
it was Bruno Walter at Munich on 28
March 1916 while it did much for the
career of Maria Jeritza who made the
role her own. The listener should bear
in mind that this music which opens
the CD, is highly erotic yet comes from
the pen of an uninitiated youth. The
Theme of Op.42 is marked to be played
‘like an Irish folk tune’ and is followed
by seven brief but colourful variations.
It was written for a school orchestra.
Tales of Strauss was originally
a fantasia for piano, but subsequently,
and with the composer’s approval, orchestrated
by Franz Kopriva. Straussiana
is what its title implies, but again
it is Johann rather than Richard from
which the music is derived, three short
pieces rescored by Korngold. Given no
opus number because he was superstitious
that he would not live beyond his Opus
42, sure enough Straussiana was
his last completed work four years before
his death.
Apart from a woefully
out of tune chord which concludes track
8 (Märchenbilder), the playing
of the Bruckner Orchestra of Linz is
both stylish and idiomatic under their
principal guest conductor Caspar Richter.
While the sound ambience could do with
much more bloom and space, this is a
welcome disc of highly enjoyable music
taking us beyond the obvious as far
as Korngold’s output is concerned -
the violin concerto is justifiably doing
well.
Christopher Fifield
Bruckner Orchestra Linz/Caspar Richter 
