As I'm currently blasting my ear-drums with Das Wunder der Heliane, I just love Korngold more and more. A child prodigy who dazzled Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, he wrote some amazing orchestral scores and fantastic operas including Die Tote Stadt before fleeing the Nazi regime (only just in time) and supplying Hollywood with some of the finest film scores of the 1940s. Late works like the Violin Concerto and Symphony are superbly crafted late-Romanticism tinged with a very personal chromatic twist. Any other fans?
;)
Oo, yes! Those wonderful Errol Flynn movies never fail to get me all of a tingle, especially when he's swash-buckling aboard ship or prancing around in tights in Sherwood Forest. I'll try and have a listen to more of Korngold now I come to think of it, where would you suggest I start?
Virtually everything has been recorded, and very successfully. There is (or was) a great series of discs on the ASV label recorded by the Bruckner Orchester Linz and Caspar Richter which covers a lot of material. Chandos have done well by Korngold, especially now that John Wilson has joined the conducting team. I'd jump in headfirst with
Sursum Corda (1920),
Die Tote Stadt (1920), the Violin Concerto (1945) and the Symphony (1947-52)...
:D
