ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD

This album features the premiere recording of the orchestral version of the Fairy Tale Pictures.

Korngold is famous, of course, for a string of brilliantly sucessful Hollywood fil scores whcih he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s, though he retired from motion pictures in 1947 and devoted himself to the compostion of concert music. He was already an accomplished composer before he left Vienna for Hollywood. He was a child prdigy, composing some brilliantly assured orchestral works whilst barely a teenager, such as the Sinfonietta, composed at the age of just fourteen. Perhaps that is not so surprising for this composer, for the ballet-pantomime Der Schneemann (The Snowman), of which the first act recorded here, was composed at the age of eleven! The Emperor Franz Josef got to hear of a charity  peformance of the work, and as a result, it was fully stage at the Vienna Court Opera House in October 1910. It was revised in 1913, caused a sensation, and led to Korngold’s international career. it is a charming work, full of the characteristics which marked composer’s later scores, a trait which sets him apart from many other child prodigies.

The Märchenbilder (Fairy Tale Pictures) also date from 1910. Originally composed as piano pieces they were orchestrated three years later. As the title suggests, these are highly attractive pieces which whcih received their first performance - amazingly - on 11 June 1997 with the BBC Philharmonic, before an invited audience. The Schauspiel Ouvertüre (Overture to a Drama) was Korngold’s first published orchestral work. Composed at the age of fourteen, this ambitiously dramatic work is full of imaginative touches, and shows that the composer’s dramatic flair was already fully developed. The two excerpts from Volanta, Korngold’s second opera, include the richly orchestrated and atmospheric Prelude, and the vibrant Carnival scene, both of which enjoyed popularity in the concert hall. The opera was first performed in Munich in March 1916.