Korngold’s music for Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado about Nothing, premiered in Vienna in 1920, enjoyed instant success and soon spread around the world. But the music has not been heard as Korngold intended since the 1st production. For this recording, made in conjunction with a staged US premiere, Korngold’s complete score was reconstructed from the original Viennese materials and is played here by the chamber-orchestral forces for which it was written.

REVIEW:

This is indeed a worthy and welcome addition to the Korngold discography. At long last we have a further complete performance of the composer’s delightful incidental music to Shakespeare’s comedy. It joins the sequence recorded by Ondine with John Storgards conducting. The music was first performed in Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace when Korngold was just 21. It was very successful and the composer would later go on to adapt the music for various chamber ensembles and as an orchestral suite. Now we have the music as it was performed at Schönbrunn together with choice dramatic overlays including Balthasar’s Song, ‘Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more; Men were deceivers ever’, Beatrice’s soliloquy as she yields to love, and the two sets of lovers’ happy uniting in the final wedding scene.

The orchestra is the same size and specification as that at Schönbrunn with a string quartet rather than a string section so that proper balances with all the other instruments can be assured. With the string quartet are: solo flute/piccolo, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet and trombone with two horns, a piano, harmonium, harp and three percussionists plus solo timpanist. The original parts were available so that each player could replicate the bowings and articulations used in Vienna. Furthermore, all the composer’s own recordings of the work were made available too, so questions of tempo and portamento could be addressed. Conductor John Mauceri was a very apt choice for he has had much experience conducting Korngold and is a stalwart champion of film music, an asset that might well be regarded as not being far removed from the spirit of this work – in fact the March of the Watch could be considered a pre-echo of Korngold’s Sherwood Forest scenes from his The Adventures of Robin Hood. Mauceri also contributes the erudite notes for this album.

Korngold’s conception works very well in his chosen ensemble. It points up the comedy and irony such as that in March of the Watch and in the dreamy romanticism of the Garden Music. All those intimate glistening string-harp-and-harmonium figures, and rippling piano arpeggios, suggest birdsong and flowers nodding in zephyr breezes. It’s all in gentle romantic waltz time, plus the contrastingly intense almost Mahlerian Funeral Music. Although I would have thought it unnecessary, five of the pieces that have dialogue are repeated again in purely instrumental dress.

There have been a number of recordings of Korngold’s purely orchestral suite from Much Ado About Nothing. Of these I would unhesitatingly recommend Caspar Richter’s 2002 reading originally released on CD DCA 1131. This is not only because it included, for the first time, the enchanting Garden Music but also for the other items on this album which had great appeal especially Korngold’s divine Abschiedlieder Songs  (Songs of Farewell). A delight for committed Korngold fans.

-- MusicWeb International (Aan Lace)

Vienna was in the grip of serious political unrest that forced many of it's artists into exile when Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) composed his Second String Quartet in 1933, first performed the following year in the Austrian capital. In it he celebrated, before it faded away, the vitality of a musical school of which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) had been one of the founders more than a century and a half earlier, and which Anton Webern (1883-1945) had helped to usher into modernity. It is this lineage that the musicians of the Quatuor Herm�s (the Herm�s String Quartet) highlight through a twilight-tinged programme in which each work bears witness to a fascinating narrative power and could be understood as an expression of a farewell.

The members of the Hegel Quartet grew up in different parts of the 'New World': Australia, USA and Canada. In search of the roots of the musical traditions in which they grew up, each of them made their own way to Europe during their studies. It was pure coincidence that they met in mid-life, having already absorbed so much of the legendary musicians who make the European concert scene so rich. Composers Fritz Kreisler and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, like so many other Jewish artists, escaped the turmoil of the World Wars in the last century and eventually became citizens of the United States. These two great artists, and many others in similar life situations, created a thriving cultural paradise in their new homelands - for example, in South America, Canada, or Australia - that produced generations of artists. Even at the height of his success as a Hollywood film composer, Korngold greatly missed Vienna and its opera houses, and it seems that he died of a broken heart after unsuccessfully trying to re-establish himself in 1950s Europe. The Hegel Quartet’s new recording of these works is also accompanied, in a modest way, by a desire to repatriate, as it were, Kreisler and Korngold to their beloved Europe by four emigrants from the opposite direction.

While the three composers featured on this recording are not, in the public perception and sometimes even in that of the performers, among the most significant exponents of Viennese music in the first half of the twentieth century, their remarkably expressive and virtuoso writing is deeply rooted in fin-de-si�cle Vienna. They were banned by the dictatorships of the 1930s and then blacklisted in the aftermath of the Second World War by the young European avant-garde, and it is only in recent years that the beauty and opulence of their works have been rediscovered. Vienna-born conductor Sascha Goetzel writes about the works performed here with the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire: 'With Korngold, Schreker and Krenek, we're not just hearing music - we're entering a dialogue between past and present, tradition and rebellion, myth and modernity [...] Korngold embodies the emotional sincerity and creative ambition of the late Romantic tradition. Schreker immerses us in the subconscious - mythical, unstable, and rich in feeling. Krenek breaks through the facade, injecting irony, jazz and fragmentation into the orchestral form [...] In their own ways, each composer pushes back against inherited conventions to discover new languages of sound.'

The Pacifica Quartet presents The Korngold Collection, a landmark recording of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's complete string quartets and rarely heard chamber works tracing the composer's extraordinary evolution from prodigy of post-imperial Vienna to pioneering film composer in Hollywood. Described by The Daily Telegraph as "nothing short of phenomenal," the multiple Grammy Award-winning Pacifica Quartet brings more than three decades of acclaimed artistry to this sweeping portrait of Korngold's chamber music. The three string quartets, written between 1923 and 1945, chart Korngold's artistic journey: the First Quartet pulses with adventurous harmony; the Second, composed just before his emigration from Austria, overflows with lush melody; and the Third, finalized after WWII, draws on themes from his iconic film scores, including The Sea Hawk and Between Two Worlds. Complementing the quartets are two early chamber gems: the radiant Piano Quintet in E major (1920), written in the wake of his operatic triumph, Die tote Stadt and performed with pianist Orion Weiss; and the vibrant String Sextet in D major (1914), a youthful work that helped establish Korngold's early reputation, featuring violist Milena P�jaro-van de Stadt and cellist Eric Kim. Praised for their "remarkable expressive range and tonal beauty" (The New York Times), the Pacifica Quartet has distinguished itself through a deep commitment to complete composer cycles, including The Soviet Experience, their celebrated survey of Shostakovich's 15 string quartets, plus quartets by his contemporaries.

Viviane Goergen has not only made a name for herself with her recordings of Ernst Toch's piano works, among others, through far-sighted repertoire enrichment, but also with an interpretation concept that offered new approaches for interpreters as early as the 1980s through the use of meditation, autogenic and mental training, among other things, which also benefits her Schumann recording from 1988.

One of the New York Times' 5 Classical Albums to Hear Now

Shortlisted for the Gramophone Awards

Perhaps nobody since John Barbirolli has been able to make strings sing like the brilliantly talented John Wilson.

Following their critically acclaimed album of English Music for Strings, Sinfonia of London and John Wilson turn to Germany and three outstanding works for string orchestra. Franz Schreker’s Intermezzo, the oldest piece here, was composed in 1900, before Schreker’s rise to fame in the opera houses of Germany and Austria, but shows strong indications of what was to follow. Korngold composed the Symphonische Serenade following his return to Vienna from Hollywood after the Second World War, and shortly before he wrote his Symphony in F sharp. Korngold effortlessly conjures a vivid range of colors and textures from his large forces (32 violins, 12 violas, 12 cellos, and 8 basses) in a work that explores the virtuosity of the players to the full. Composed in 1945, as a reaction to the horrors of the war, and the desecration of German culture, Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings seems to look backwards to the German Romantic tradition (a trait even more evident in his Four Last Songs, of 1948). The moving final passage, marked ‘In Memoriam’, leaves the listener to contemplate in silence.

"Wilson’s release wins hands down. Part of the victory is due to the conductor and string players’ panache…whatever the mood, the Sinfonia’s tone stays full-blooded and refulgent, just like Chandos’s recording." -Times of London

REVIEW:

What a fine and stimulating recording this is. Perhaps nobody since John Barbirolli has been able to make strings sing like the brilliantly talented John Wilson. Franz Schreker’s “Intermezzo” here has a sheen to it that is intensely delicate one minute and impossibly sumptuous the next. Strauss’s “Metamorphosen” has rarely had such an agonizingly drawn out, lovingly burnished performance as this. Even better is the rarity that accompanies it: Korngold’s Symphonic Serenade, a disfigured, difficult recollection of all that poignantly easygoing light music in the Austrian tradition, written when he returned to Vienna from Hollywood. The hush that Wilson finds for its slow movement is indescribably haunting.

-- The New York Times

Second and last volume of Krongold’s complete String Quartets survey by the Alma Quartets. The disc contains the First Quartet (composed in 1923) and the Piano Quintet (1921). Music from Vienna raging Twenties in flawless performances by one of today leading string quartets. Ideal match between Alma Quartet and a specialist pianist as Severin von Eckardstein. Ritmo (SP) on first volume (CC 72869): The recording offered by Alma Quartet is the best available of these works for its understanding of the expressive world of Korngold; is perfect intonation and reading of these difficult works.

Conductor and composer Jorg Widmann leads the Stuttgarter Kammerochester in this album of masterpieces for string orchestra. The precocious Mendelssohn is represented with his String Symphony No.10 in B minor. It consists of a single movement, in which a sweeping slow introduction is followed by an allegro and coda. Widmann's own Ikarische Klage takes it's subject matter from a poem by Baudelaire: "Burnt by the love of beauty / I will not have the sublime honour / of giving my name to the abyss / that will serve as my grave". On Korngold's Symphonic Serenade, Widmann says "What a piece, full of glittering magic!". In this work we hear dreams of a real or imaginary Vienna in the time of Mahler or Berg: a vision that looks to the future, is heart-rending but never sentimental.

Korngold was just 23 when his most celebrated stage work was premiered in 1920 by no less than Otto Klemperer. The rich orchestration and brilliant bel canto vocal writing is here superbly realized by a cast led by Klaus Florian Vogt and Camilla Nylund, with “conducting to die for” (The Guardian) from Mikko Franck. “I regard Die tote Stadt as one of the greatest operas of the first quarter of the 20th century and the Finnish National Opera’s production makes it stand out as a true masterpiece, scenically and musically.” -Seen and Heard International

A refined Lieder recital focused on the fascinating figure of Alma Mahler. All main composers of Vienna at the outset of the 20th century are represented. An unprecedented flourishing of musical and artistic talents concentrated at that time in the Austro-Hungarian empire capital. Third recording on Challenge Classics by raising star baritone Raoul Steffani. Previous releases: CC 72865 with Magdalena Kozena. Classica (FR): Raoul Steffani demonstrates a style and a diction always impeccable. He vocally masters all these lieder which often seek the top of the register and bring a lot of colors. CC 72785, American Record Guide (USA): This is an exceptionally fine debut recording for an already well-developed singer.

In the shadows of history, the works of Mieczyslaw Weinberg and Erich Korngold emerge as profound testaments to the resilience of the human spirit. Both composers, deeply affected by the tumultuous tides of the twentieth century, faced the harrowing realities of persecution. Their music, rich in emotion and complexity, serves not only as a reflection of their personal trials but as an enduring legacy of hope and beauty amid despair. Driven by a passion for meaningful projects, cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper gave the New York premiere of Weinberg's Fantasia for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 52 and Korngold's Cello Concerto in C major in 2025. She is rejoined by her concert partner, conductor Constantine Orbelian, and the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra to record these works, together with Weinberg's Concerto for Cello and Orchestra. Three extraordinary works for solo cello and orchestra by two leading composers of the twentieth century.

Mithras Trio' second album for Linn showcases early works by Shostakovich, Korngold and Lisney, continuing the 'intriguing and eclectic' programming The Guardian praised on it's first album Eros. Fountain of Youth highlights the surprising number of piano trios written by composers at the very start of their careers and features the world premiere recording of Petrichor by cellist Joy Lisney. Commissioned by Mithras Trio and premiered at Wigmore Hall in January 2023, this evocatively titled work is named after the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil. Two youthful works by Shostakovich and Korngold complete the album: in Shostakovich's First Piano Trio we find hints of the composer's mature style, where grotesque and late-Romantic moments mingle in a single-movement trio, and in Korngold's first published work, the Piano Trio, Op. 1, the influences of Mahler, Strauss and Puccini do not detract from the young composer's already unique voice and exceptional maturity.

Classical Music

Korngold: Tote Stadt (Die)