Korngold Stadt

Cellist Ophélie Gaillard embraces diversity and empathy in this rich, cinematic album of world music. She rides Korngold’s volcanic, rollercoaster melodies into expressive excellence in the “Concerto in One Movement for Cello and Orchestra,” while her reading of Bloch’s “From Jewish Life” bears a beautiful sadness that feels transcendental.

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.

The Doric String Quartet is now firmly established as one of the outstanding quartets of its generation. Now in its eleventh season, it regularly performs at major festivals and venues throughout the UK as well as abroad in continental Europe and Asia. This is the Quartet’s debut CD on Chandos as exclusive artists. Most famous for his lushly romantic film scores, Erich Wolfgang Korngold wrote a quantity of music for the concert hall, the stage, as well as three highly individual string quartets between the years 1920 and 1945. Korngold was one of the great prodigies in the history of classical music, and by the time he started work on his First String Quartet (completed 1923), he had already written what many consider to be his magnum opus, the opera Die tote Stadt.