Post by erik on Feb 5, 2022 22:43:33 GMT -5
Though he is most remembered for having helped invent the lexicon of Hollywood film music in the 1930's, Austrian émigré Erich Wolfgang Korngold also had some substantial contributions to the general concert hall. One of them is the work in this week's Classical Works Spotlight.
Korngold: VIOLIN CONCERTO IN D MAJOR
The Austrian-born composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold is know to most music listeners nowadays as the basic founder of Hollywood film music, along with such gentlemen as Fred Steiner and Alfred Newman. But Korngold’s reputation might very well have turned out differently had the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi ideology of anti-Semitism not cast the black shadow over Europe. Even while he was in America working on the score to The Adventures Of Robin Hood in 1938, his home in Vienna had been confiscated by the Nazis; and although he had composed a number of great German-language operas, including “Die Tote Stadt”, gaining critical acclaim from fellow composers Richard Strauss and Giacomo Puccini, prior to World War II, once he was firmly established in America (becoming a naturalized citizen in 1943), Korngold never saw Europe again. At the end of the war, Korngold composed what ultimately became his most popular straightforward concert work, the Violin Concerto In D Major. But while it was indeed a straightforward concert hall piece, with a running time of twenty-five minutes, Korngold couldn’t help but slip in a few references to the scores he had composed for the cinema, including some motifs borrowed from 1937’s Another Dawn, 1939’s Juarez, and 1937’s The Prince And The Pauper. The work, which he dedicated to Alma Mahler, the widow of Gustav Mahler, was premiered on February 15, 1947, with the legendary Jascha Heifetz as the soloist, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vladmir Goldschmann; six weeks later, Heifetz gave the work its New York premiere, with the New York Philharmonic led by Efrem Kurtz. But it was almost six more years before the work got its first recording, again with Heifetz as soloist, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of the orchestra’s music director Alfred Wallenstein, on January 10, 1953. To this day, that recording remains the work’s definitive recording.
Violin: JASCHA HEIFETZ
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/ALFRED WALLENSTEIN (RCA)
Included:
Miklos Rozsa: VIOLIN CONCERTO (Dallas Symphony Orchestra/WALTER HENDL)
Miklos Rozsa: THEME WITH VARIATIONS (Cello: GREGOR PIATIGORSKY) (RCA Chamber Orchestra)
Franz Waxman: CARMEN FANTASY (RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra/DONALD VOORHEES)
Korngold: VIOLIN CONCERTO IN D MAJOR
The Austrian-born composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold is know to most music listeners nowadays as the basic founder of Hollywood film music, along with such gentlemen as Fred Steiner and Alfred Newman. But Korngold’s reputation might very well have turned out differently had the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi ideology of anti-Semitism not cast the black shadow over Europe. Even while he was in America working on the score to The Adventures Of Robin Hood in 1938, his home in Vienna had been confiscated by the Nazis; and although he had composed a number of great German-language operas, including “Die Tote Stadt”, gaining critical acclaim from fellow composers Richard Strauss and Giacomo Puccini, prior to World War II, once he was firmly established in America (becoming a naturalized citizen in 1943), Korngold never saw Europe again. At the end of the war, Korngold composed what ultimately became his most popular straightforward concert work, the Violin Concerto In D Major. But while it was indeed a straightforward concert hall piece, with a running time of twenty-five minutes, Korngold couldn’t help but slip in a few references to the scores he had composed for the cinema, including some motifs borrowed from 1937’s Another Dawn, 1939’s Juarez, and 1937’s The Prince And The Pauper. The work, which he dedicated to Alma Mahler, the widow of Gustav Mahler, was premiered on February 15, 1947, with the legendary Jascha Heifetz as the soloist, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vladmir Goldschmann; six weeks later, Heifetz gave the work its New York premiere, with the New York Philharmonic led by Efrem Kurtz. But it was almost six more years before the work got its first recording, again with Heifetz as soloist, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of the orchestra’s music director Alfred Wallenstein, on January 10, 1953. To this day, that recording remains the work’s definitive recording.
Violin: JASCHA HEIFETZ
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/ALFRED WALLENSTEIN (RCA)
Included:
Miklos Rozsa: VIOLIN CONCERTO (Dallas Symphony Orchestra/WALTER HENDL)
Miklos Rozsa: THEME WITH VARIATIONS (Cello: GREGOR PIATIGORSKY) (RCA Chamber Orchestra)
Franz Waxman: CARMEN FANTASY (RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra/DONALD VOORHEES)