Korngold: Much Ado About Nothing (Incidental Music), Op. 11
UNC School of the Arts Drama Soloists & Symphony Orchestra/John Mauceri
Toccata Classics 0160
Total Time:  69:05
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

The music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold certainly has had its day of late with multiple fine interpretations of his gorgeous Violin Concerto and even a good number of recordings of his only symphony.  The past decade or so has seen many of his scores appear on CD as well allowing a new generation, hopefully, to hear this great post-romantic music.  Korngold’s life certainly did not turn out the way he might have thought as his emigration to the United States landed him in Hollywood.  His genius and establishment as a prodigy essentially left behind.  Still, as we continue to explore those earlier works, one can be struck by the thread of Romanticism inherent in Zemlinsky especially dressed up in Korngold’s evolving musical language and brilliant orchestrations. 

One of these works is a set of incidental pieces Korngold composed for a Viennese production of Much Ado About Nothing in 1920.  The work was one of the composer’s many early successes and yet, almost a century later, it has only appeared on CD as a series of selections in suite form.  This new Toccata Classics recording restores the score reconstructed from its original materials and returns it to the chamber orchestra forces originally intended.  The production came about in conjunction with a performance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem.  Mauceri’s great booklet notes reveal the use of original manuscript sources provided by the Austrian National Library and an intent to discover just how Korngold’s music was used.  The attempt to recreate the same pit orchestra consisting of a string quartet and solo wind and brass is exemplary.  Mauceri likens this scoring to that of Richard Strauss’ Burger als Edelmann (1912, rev. 1917) with which Korngold may have been familiar.  The performers also had access to recordings made by the composer to help inform performance practice and approaches to various tempi and attacks. 

The recording presents the score as intended with dialogue over 18 tracks.  However, in a very wise move, the same 5 tracks are added at the end without dialogue.  This is invaluable as a tool to hear how Korngold underscored this dialogue early in his career before it would become his bread and butter in America.  The booklet also provides a general overview of the story matched to the tracks of the piece. 

First, it is important to note that while these may be college, and in some cases high school musicians (!), the performances are really something.  The reality though is that any hesitancy one may have about this is dispelled quickly in the opening “Overture.”  The work really sparkles with so many of Korngold’s delightful touches that shift from crystal clear textures to those great romantic swaths.  There are moments that certainly seem to be the roots for the composer’s later film work.

The first adjustment that listeners will need to make is to the smaller sound of the orchestra.  Most are used to the huger romantic orchestral sound of the composer and while the same gestures may be here, they are far more intimate with brilliant solo ideas.  One also hears the combining of unison/octave strings with trumpet and/or trombone in the more lyrically romantic moments.  The bells and percussion groupings also add a lot to the music.  The group also uses a re-created harmonium.   In the “Kriegsmusik,” some might here a little of The Adventures of Robin Hood, especially in the music’s final cadence.  There are several quite brief musical moments that help provide characterization coupled with interesting dance moments and scene changes.  One is struck at how these works are so indicative of what would become a standard approach in film scoring and it is a reminder of the latter’s theatrical roots.  Balthasar’s song is a wonderful discovery (a link to some of Doyle’s approach for Branagh productions).    

Toccata’s recording is very close and at times a bit dry at times.  This makes some of the bass a little too heavy in spots but the treble settings allow for adequate brighter balance.  Dialogue is not too overwrought and quite professional sometimes feeling more a reading at times than a stage performance.  Still, it works quite well because the focus is on the background music that accompanies it and the characterizations work well.  Part of this is due to being dropped into the scenes as a complete play recording is not the intent.   

All around, this is a stellar example that shows how musical education and understanding works to create great music at all levels.  The performances are really accomplished and one could not wish for a more sympathetic and understanding conductor than Mauceri, woefully under-represented in the studio these days.  In short, this is a must have for Korngold-ians and those interested in music from the early 20^th Century.

Korngold: String Sextet, Op. 10; Piano Quintet, Op. 15
Camerata Freden
Tacet 198
Total Time:  68:12
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

The International Freden Music Festival was established in 1991 in this small village of some 3000 people in Lower Saxony.  The purpose of the festival is to explore lesser known pieces and in addition commissions one new work each year.  The festival usually focuses on a specific theme and through its educational commitments and workshops introduces hosts of people to new musical experiences.  In the present recording, they are taking on two early, pre-Hollywood, chamber pieces by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.  The String Sextet was written when the composer was only 19 while the Piano Quintet comes from his mid-twenties.  Both allow windows into Korngold’s development as a composer in the post-romantic tradition of Zemlinsky, but also experimenting and borrowing from recent developments in atonal music by Schoenberg (whose first symphonic poem is quite like Zemlinsky’s style) and even the early appearances of Neo-Classicism.  Both works are generally paired together on disc.

The 1916 String Sextet in D, Op. 10 opens with a quite modern “Moderato-Allegro” where thematic lines have more angular leaps and in which harmonic language seems to teeter on the edge of atonality.  Each line though is somehow distinctly audible in the texture in the more contrapuntal moments of the music.  The sheer dramatic thrust of this movement is a sign of things to come as is occasionally beautiful lyric writing if more overt romanticism.  The staccato writing will sometimes make one think of Bartok, also honing his compositional style at this time.  The second movement moves deliciously between major and minor tonalities in an almost decadent way making this work feel more a part of Expressionist aesthetics.  In fact, one might consider listening to this work and Schoenberg’s 1899 sextet, Verklarte Nacht, to get a sense of the different approaches to this chamber force.  The third movement “Intermezzo” takes a little time to develop into a rather interesting little landler though it feels at times slightly off (a la Mahler).  The final “presto” has some thematic revisiting to tie the work together but the march-like idea with harsh dissonances, never getting quite as macabre as Shostakovich, and an almost Baroque-like canon that does not quite get off the ground but serves to move back to the main thematic idea are quite striking. 

 We fast-forward five years for the second work on the disc, the Piano Quintet in E, Op. 15.  The piece, composed over the course of 1921-1922, followed his opera Die Todt Stadt.  We are in a different world here than the sextet with more romantic lines in strings supported by rich harmonies in the piano providing an inviting opening.  This is intimate chamber music writing of the highest order with shifts into the sort of expressionist/romantic moods explored in the earlier work, though it is the latter often winning out in the quintet.  Most fascinating is how Korngold’s melodic lines seem to emerge from his harmony.  The central movement is a set of variations of one of the composer’s earlier songs (“Mond, so gehst du wieder” Op. 14, no.3).  Slowly the melodic idea builds in strings against a simple chordal piano accompaniment with only slightly expanded harmony in a gorgeously evocative dream-like movement which provides a truly intimate musical experience.  Most fascinating is the way Korngold builds tension by moving up and away from his initial established harmonic center in this movement often landing in unexpected places.  The climax in particular seems to veer nearly out of control before settling back down though not without very high violin writing.  The final movement is a masterful exploration of developing motivic material.  The music morphs into new directions though this is still essentially a monothematic movement with development.  Some of the musical gestures here will be familiar to fans of Korngold’s later work. 

The performances here are quite exceptional with beautiful playing and phrasing that captures the essence of these pieces.  The tendency to try and make Korngold’s early music sound lush like his later Hollywood pieces can often destroy the intimacy of these chamber works.  Here, the flashes of ultra-romantic ideas flow sensitively out of the more atonal-sounding material creating dramatic performances.  The crispness of the recording allows individual lines to be captured rather cleanly and the results are quite engaging.  While other recordings of these works are often equally captivating, this is certainly a disc worth seeking out for fans of chamber music performance and Korngold.