Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 35 Erich Korngold
Julius Korngold, one of the most important music critics in turn-of-the-(last)-century Vienna, named his two sons for a favorite composer, his older son Hanns Robert after Robert Schumann, and his younger son, Erich Wolfgang, after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Born in 1897 in Brno, Moravia (now Slovakia), Erich Wolfgang would be the son who proved almost eerily true to his namesake. Indeed, young Korngold may rank with Mozart as one of the most spectacular prodigies in history. By the age of seven, the chubby child was already filling music notebooks with little compositions - with some of these early jottings actually finding their way into Korngold's mature works. By the age of nine, he had written a cantata, Gold, for solo singers, chorus, and piano, which he played from memory on the piano for Gustav Mahler himself, stunning the venerable older composer. "A genius! A genius!" Mahler exclaimed, pacing the floor. And by 11, Korngold had written a ballet, The Snowman, which was premiered at the Vienna Court Opera and was the talk of the town. More than even Mozart, Korngold appeared to have forged a distinctive compositional voice practically from the crib.
His earliest works showing an affinity for theatre and a gift for characterization, it is not surprising that Korngold eventually gravitated to operas, several of which (particularly The Dead City, written in his early twenties) have attracted renewed interest. And thus it is also not surprising that, ultimately, via collaborations with the great theater director Max Reinhardt, Korngold found his star guiding him in 1934 to the nascent film industry in Hollywood, where Reinhardt had lured him to arrange Mendelssohn's music for a filmed version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was a small step from there to film-scoring; shortly after the Reinhardt project, Korngold penned the score for Captain Blood, Errol Flynn's breakthrough movie, and the genius was hooked. Writing music for film proved an uncanny fit for the composer, whose lush, late-Romantic style, fast becoming obsolete in the 12-tone climate of Europe, was perfectly suited to the celluloid fantasies - opera without songs! - of Warner Brothers. From that point, Korngold became one of the most respected film composers in Hollywood, commuting between Vienna and Hollywood until, in 1938, the Nazi cloud sent him and his family into an 11-year exile in Tinseltown.
But Korngold did not abandon the composing of "serious" music during this time, and it was a running joke in the family that every time their old friend, the great violinist Bronislav Huberman, ran into Korngold, he would say, "Erich! Where's my violin concerto?" Perhaps spurred by the recent death of his father in September, 1945, Korngold - always aware of his father's objections to his Hollywood work - finally did refocus his efforts on pure composition and write the concerto. Not a man to waste good ideas, Korngold freely cannibalized his movie scores for the work, borrowing a theme from the 1937 movie Another Dawn for the opening solo violin theme and another melody from the 1939 Juarez for the second theme in the same movement. The second movement takes its melody from the 1936 Anthony Adverse and the third movement is based on variants of a theme from the 1937 The Prince and the Pauper.
To Korngold's annoyance, Huberman would not commit to a performance date and had not even bothered looking at the piece. Meanwhile, Jascha Heifetz - also living in Hollywood by now - heard of the concerto and arranged for Korngold to play through the piece for him. Expressionlessly, Heifetz asked to borrow the score, and a few weeks later, returned and played it through with Korngold, flawlessly. The next time Korngold dined with Huberman, he said, "Huberman, I haven't been unfaithful yet, I'm not engaged...but I have flirted." Huberman was good-natured about the "cheating," and died shortly thereafter anyway, ending the discussion. Heifetz went on to premiere the concerto with the St. Louis Symphony on February 15, 1947 and eventually made a classic recording of the work.
That Korngold's Mozartian genius ultimately expressed itself primarily in Hollywood, that his music may sound to some like "movie music," should not be viewed disdainfully. It is more that his Strauss and Mahler-influenced harmonic vocabulary and expressive opulence were imparted to the new medium of film, marking film-writing forever. His music does not sound like movie music so much as movie music sounds like Korngold, for which - if the Violin Concerto is any indication - we should all be grateful.
Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 35
