November 13, 2010

  • Review: Korngold Symphony!

     

    Korngold: Symphony In F#, Op. 40/Much Ado About Nothing (Incidental Music)
    Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra/Marc Albrecht
    PentaTone Classics 5186 373
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    The music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold is finally getting its due, something which the composer never would have thought possible perhaps.  Having created classic film scores for Errol Flynn films in the 1930s, the composer slowly tried to recapture some of the attention of the concert world.  Unfortunately, the rich post-romantic music of the likes of Zemlinsky and Richard Strauss was already being somewhat overshadowed by a host of composers exploring atonal music and jazz rhythms.  But, the communicability of Korngold’s music in and out of the concert hall perhaps meant that inevitably its day would come.  While the Violin Concerto appears to have now entered the standard repertoire, his other orchestral pieces are only slowly doing so.  His one work in the genre, the Symphony in F#, Op. 40, has five-six current recordings in the catalogue each with its merits.  This new release on PentaTone comes with the added multi-channel super audio stereo approach.  It features the same coupling as Andre Previn’s superb Deutsche Grammophon recording now over a decade old!

    Korngold’s symphony was composed in the first part of the 1950s.  He had returned to Austria hoping to restart his concert career only to find that no one wanted to go back to the “good old days” and that he and his music were a relic of the past.  Even the committed premiere performance by Wilhelm Furtwangler of the Symphonic Serenade by the Vienna Philharmonic in 1950 was not enough to help Korngold’s hopes come to fruition.  He had already begun a symphony while in Vienna and there is a lot of the drama of opera and his film works that can be heard in it.  The work bears a dedication to Franklin Delano Roosevelt suggesting his own appreciation for his refuge in America.  There may have been some sense that the symphony as a genre was dead by 1950.  Copland’s Third Symphony had essentially sealed the genres Americana possibilities.  Vaughan-Williams’ massive Sinfonia Antarctica would be completed in 1952 and is a bit interesting with its film music connections as a companion work of far differing style.  Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony was also being completed and Shostakovich’s film-like Tenth Symphony was still on the horizon.  Korngold’s work then can stand by itself against any and all of these.

    It is obvious from the opening bars that Albrecht has spent some time trying to get at the heart of this difficult work and hears it perhaps as an anguished extension of Mahlerian proportions.  The visceral edge of the opening brass and percussion punctuations are quite crisp and when this moves on to the more Romantic, lush chromaticism, the contrast is stark and quite dramatic.  It is as if these two sounds are truly fighting it out with one another: Austrian symphonic tradition versus Hollywood.  The second movement’s scherzo opening zips by at breakneck speed like someone rushing with excitement only to be stopped dead by the starkness of its central section which might be like someone looking at the devastation of a huge battlefield, and yet as the scherzo returns there are moments of great hope that seems to be bittersweet before its massive final bars.  One of the great moments of the symphony is its gorgeous slow movement with recognizable themes from The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Captain Blood, and Anthony Adverse.  The minor cast and foreboding shifts make one wonder if these great musical moments from Korngold’s past were being looked at as somehow tragic with a sense of what could have been darkening the composer’s lived reality. 

    Albrecht’s performance is simply astounding.  From the taut opening to the depth of the slower moments of the score, it is obvious that he takes this work on its own merits fully informed of its intended connection to its Austrian predecessors and firmly rooted in the style of Korngold at the same time.  This is not a performance that tries to make this a “nice” film music symphony, nor does it try to overstate this as a concert work, instead the performance manages to grab your attention and never hesitates to move through the various episodic moments with great dramatic musical sense.  You may not find a better performance of this work and the recording quality is simply amazing.  The huge orchestral sections are just overwhelmingly powerful and still clear.

    A quick timing comparison of other recordings of the work shows that Albrecht tends towards some faster tempi overall, though nothing ever feels rushed or out of place.  Instead one gets an emotionally powerful performance.  I have not heard Werner Andreas Albert’s recording of this work in his overview of Korngold’s orchestral music for comparison.  The Delos was one of those great appearances of James DePreist on disc (with the Oregon Symphony) and both the Previn (with the London Symphony) and Welser-Most (with the Philadelphia Orchestra) have their plus sides as well.  Albrecht’s tempi though seem to work very well as a whole making the structure of the symphony work without collapsing.

     

    Albrecht

    DePreist
    (Delos 3234)

    Previn
    (DG 453 436)

    Welser-Most
    (EMI 556169)

    Moderato, ma energico

    14:59

    15:20

    15:55

    12:50

    Scherzo: Allegro molto-Trio

    10:04

    10:33

    10:32

    9:48

    Adagio: Lento

    15:27

    16:57

    16:09

    14:45

    Finale: Allegro gaio

    10:30

    11:04

    10:31

    10:11

     

    By itself the performance of the symphony would be enough to recommend this disc.  But the companion piece, the incidental music for Much Ado About Nothing will be of interest as well,.  This 1918 work for the stage, and a chamber ensemble, was then arranged (1920) as a 5-part concert suite which has been fairly popular in concert halls.  Here is where Albrecht’s recording takes on a slight lead over Previn’s in that this release includes the “Overture” for the work (Previn’s recording only has 4 of the movements. Otherwise, the timings and performance are quite similar to that earlier release.  The music is simply delightful and is superbly performed and recorded about as well as one could hope.

    This is easily one of the best recordings of symphonic music you will hear and it is hard to imagine a better performance of the Korngold symphony.  Listener’s may be quite curious to explore the other five releases, especially those with the Strasbourg orchestra which really seems to respond to his leadership.  Highly recommended!