Korngold Stadt

The Korngold revival is gathering fabulous momentum as the composer’s centenary (29 May 1997) approaches. Now Matthias Bamert and the BBC Philharmonic give us the first ever recording of the charming military march written by Korngold for his regiment in the First World War, the best-yet recording of the bizarre Left Hand Piano Concerto and full-blooded accounts of the Cello Concerto and Symphonic Serenade, all delivered with the sensitivity and sensuality that their earlier recording of the Sinfonietta also boasted.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold is best remembered today for his popular film scores for Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and The Sea Hawk, among other Hollywood classics, and for his opera Die tote Stadt, but his oeuvre of concert and chamber music has been undergoing a gradual revival since the 1970s, with a steady increase of recordings of key works. The three string quartets are represented in the catalog on a handful of CDs, but they remain somewhat exclusive items for string players and connoisseurs and have yet to be widely performed.

Hot on the heels of their acclaimed recording of Britten’s Peter Grimes, Stuart Skelton and Edward Gardner join forces with Christine Rice and the BBC Symphony Orchestra for this fascinating programme of early twentieth-century works. Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht needs no introduction, but far rarer is Oscar Fried’s contemporaneous setting of the same poem. Composed in 1901 for soloists and orchestra, Fried’s version is a true setting of (as opposed to Schoenberg’s reflection on) the text by Richard Dehmel. Lehár wrote Fieber in 1915 as the closing part of his song cycle Aus eiserner Zeit – he then made the orchestral setting a year later. Korngold’s Lieder des Abschieds (Songs of Farewell) date from the early 1920s, whilst he was still in Vienna, and shortly after he had completed the opera Die tote Stadt. Setting poetry by Christina Rossetti, Edith Ronsperger, and Ernst Lothar, the cycle is a poignant reflection on the Great War.

Significant concertos by three great composers now join the rich and multifaceted repertoire of our new series featuring »Cello Concertos by Jewish Composers in Exile.«