Nicola Benedetti lost six months of her life to the sound of Marietta’s Lied from Korngold’s opera Die Tote Stadt. It became the germ of a best-selling album, The Silver Violin.
She’s setting off on a tour of her native Scotland with Korngold’s violin concerto and she’ll be projecting the film on big screens to explain her passion for Hollywood’s founding composer.
Watch here.
Thank you, Norman, for posting this. My mother met Korngold in Vienna before the Anschluss. She told me that he had a “Wunderkind” personality even as an adult. But I do think that some of his music has been underrated and will continue to make its way into the concert repertoire with greater frequency. As a film composer he certainly ranks among the very best.
Sadly, the attitudes that forced him ( and my mother’s family) to flee Austria, are very much alive. Baldur von Schirach’s VPO ring is eloquent testimony.
However, the VPO have performed and recorded said Korngold concerto numerous times since then.
His music is indeed unusual; colorful, imaginative, virtuosic. I have been part of a recording of his piano quintet Op. 15 and Suite Op. 23. I have also performed his wonderful cello concerto. People shy away from programming this music because of its difficulty – you simply can not throw a performance together in two hours time.
“This video is private.” Not available outside the UK? Bummer.