It’s November! Which means our next concert right is on the doorstep. This is your last chance to buy tickets for 13th November. We’re bringing a beautiful programme to the stage – Vaughan Williams’ poetic Fifth symphony, Strauss’ joyous oboe concerto and Korngold’s marvellous Theme and Variations – Which brings us to talk about Korngold and his role in this concert.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a marvel. He defined the popular orchestral music sound that everyone knows and loves nowadays and it’s amazing to see him finally getting the recognition he deserves. Most people didn’t know who he was for decades. Even still, most of his repertoire programmed in concert now is usually limited to a few pieces (his Violin concerto, for example, which deserves all accolades, famously written for the legendary Jascha Heifetz). And a lot of his beautiful scores are rarely programmed. If you were at our inaugural concert in February, you’ll remember us playing the suite from the 1939 film – ‘The Private Lives of Elizabeth & Essex’ starring Errol Flynn and Bette Davis. That was Korngold! He was one of the composers alongside Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, who established and defined the sound of Hollywood as we know today. The blueprint. John William’s Star Wars probably would not sound the way it does without Korngold’s work in the early 20th century. Andre Previn said – “If Korngold sounds like film music, it’s because film music sounds like Korngold”. His adventurous scores to the swashbuckling blockbusters starring Errol Flynn were incredibly popular – ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood‘, ‘Captain Blood’, ‘Sea Hawk’, King’s Row’, the list is long! Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a child prodigy, like Mozart and Mendelssohn. His father, Julius Korngold, one of the most influential music critics of his time in Vienna, could not have chosen a more prophetic middle name, after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. At a young age, his work had received the approval of the likes of Richard Strauss, Giacomo Puccini and Gustav Mahler, who declared him a genius. He completed his first major work, a ballet called Der Schenemann at the age of 11. His piano trio, written when he was 12, is to die for. By his early 20s, we was known across Europe for his operatic, orchestral and chamber works.
His career took a turn when he was invited by Max Reinhardt to arrange Mendelssohn’s music for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ for the big screen adaptation he was directing at Warner Bros. Pictures. The WB executives quickly took note of Korngold’s enormous talents. Members of the studio’s in-house orchestra praised his leadership on the podium, with one cellist calling the recording sessions “pure joy, unforgettable hours of music making….He didn’t conduct the orchestra, he hypnotized them.” Eager to work with him again, the studio offered him a contract to write the score for Captain Blood, which eld to him writing for many more blockbusters. Korngold thought of movies as operas without singing. He didn’t just write them for the money, he poured his heart in the music, some of his best work is his film music. Even he would agree as he used themes and material from his film scores to later write his concert works like his Symphony, Violin Concerto and Cello concerto. He would work in a projection room with a piano and a reel of the film. In a review of The Private Lives of Elizabeth & Essex, which we performed in February, Hollywood Spectator wrote – ‘It seemed as if Korngold had written music not according to what he read in the script…but on what he heard in the marvelously articulate inflections of Bette Davis’s voice, or what he perceived in the motions of her hands…‘
Hollywood provided a safe haven to Korngold and his family. In 1938, when he had decided to move back to Austria to focus on his concert music the war broke out, as Nazis took control of Austria. Jewish people. in Austria were under threat. “We thought we were Viennese, Hitler made us Jewish” he wrote. He received an offer from Warner to score The Adventures of Robin Hood, so the oppurtunity presented to escape the horrors of the war in Europe and Korngold escaped back to California, taking his family with him. Many of his royalties and assets were seized by the Nazis in Austria, and he vowed to not write any more concert music until “that monster” Hitler was defeated. He believed that this war driven society in Europe did not deserve his beautiful music. He spent the next few years working in Hollywood, writing for blockbuster big picture films, receiving great reviews, academy award nominations and had won twice, for- Anthony Adverse and Adventures of Robin Hood.
But he began to get tired of it. He missed writing concert music and being home in Austria. Moreover, he started to dislike working in Hollywood – the industry had changed. Studio executives who began to care more about money than artistic freedom, creativity and quality. He felt he was losing the joy and wanted to retire from Hollywood. So when the bells tolled in 1945 that the war was over, Korngold felt ready to retire from the film industry and move back to his home in Austria and re-establish his reputation as a composer for concert music. But alas, the world had changed. His attempt to return to Vienna only lasted two years. The destruction in Vienna was difficult to comprehend. Friends and family had either fled or been killed. Performances of his works were poorly attended and mocked by critics – ‘more corn than gold‘, one remarked. Audience in Europe had no appetite for his music. Post war, composers had changed style and the sound of classical music had a dramatic change – a new musical language to express the horrid world around. Korngold’s lush and beautiful and old sound found no place in the new society.
Believing his music would be forever forgotten, he left Austria, this time for good and moved back to Los Angeles where he spent the rest of his life. He was facing few prospects of new work now even after Jascha Heifetz brilliant performances of the violin concerto. So when the American schools orchestra association came knocking, asking him to write something for the student orchestras, Korngold cherished that opportunity. He wrote his Opus 42 – Theme & Variations, inspired by Irish folk tunes. Korngold unleashes his signature sound in this piece, taking in elements from his past works, going from pastoral feels to quirky passages to an epic march, inspired by the “March of the Merry Men” from his score from “Adventures of Robin Hood”.
Theme and Variations, marked his final opus in the catalog of works. Even though he was asked to write two pieces by the association, which he did. The second piece, Straussiana, which was a homage to Johann Strauss II and his works, he left in un-numbered. When Korngold was a child, he had a prophecy that he would not live past his opus 42. So when he wrote Theme & Variations, he decided to stop. If you count his film scores, he had written far more than 42 works and he had originally started to work on his Opus 43, which would have been a second symphony, his prophecy came to pass and Korngold passed away from brain haemorrhage in 1957, aged 60.
He died believing he was forgotten. His music and his legacy would be forever lost somewhere in the history. For decades, Korngold was only known to old movie buffs but in the recent years, his music has experienced a revival. Once buried deep by the effects of the war in Europe, Korngold is now becoming a household name. There is a lot of work to do still, a lot of music still not as well heard. And we at Holland Park Sinfonia are passionate about his life and music. And slowly working our way through to bringing his legacy to the stage in our concerts and works.
We look forward to seeing you next week.
And if you’ve made it this far, we have a special announcement for you. This won’t be our last concert of this year. We’re making our much anticipated concert debut at the legendary Ladbroke Hall in Notting Hill on December 13th. with JAZZ! Imagine a beautiful orchestra – lush strings, a jazz band and a marvel of a voice that seems like it came directly out of the 30s and 40s and 50s. Those classic songs of Ella Fitsgerald, Nar King Cole, Billie Holiday, Jo Stafford and more, with their original arrangements. Oh it’s going to be special. You can get tickets now for that as well – HERE
Leave a Reply