Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35

Program notes

About the Work

Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a child prodigy of almost Mozartean precocity (Mahler called him a genius when he was nine) who became a celebrated opera composer in 1920s Vienna. Then history intervened: a Jewish artist, he found refuge in Hollywood in the 1930s and became one of the founders of the symphonic film score, winning Oscars for swashbucklers like The Adventures of Robin Hood. After the war, with the Nazis defeated, he turned back to the concert hall, and the Violin Concerto of 1945 was his glorious re-entry. Famously, he built it from melodies drawn from his own film scores, themes from Another Dawn, Juarez and Anthony Adverse among them, repurposing music written for the screen as the material of a full Romantic concerto. Far from cheapening it, this gives the work its lush, soaring, unashamedly emotional character.

Korngold dedicated the concerto to Alma Mahler, widow of his early champion Gustav Mahler, and it found the ideal advocate in Jascha Heifetz, who gave the premiere in St Louis on 15 February 1947 to one of the most rapturous ovations the city had ever heard. Heifetz’s advocacy did much to establish it in the repertoire. Gorgeously orchestrated, fiendishly difficult, and drenched in late-Romantic glamour, it is the sound of Old Vienna reborn in Technicolor Hollywood.

What to Listen For

From the soloist’s very first phrase, this is music of soaring, golden lyricism. Listen for the gorgeous opening theme (lifted from the film Another Dawn) that the violin sings high above shimmering orchestral colour. The whole first movement luxuriates in big, cinematic melodies and lush harmony, with a brilliant cadenza for the soloist.

The slow movement (Romance) is the concerto’s heart: a tender, dreamy nocturne built on a melody from Anthony Adverse, the violin spinning long, rapt lines over a glowing accompaniment touched with celesta and vibraphone: pure Hollywood enchantment. Then the finale bursts in, a fast, jaunty, jig-like romp full of bravura fireworks and high spirits. Listen for the dazzling virtuosity Korngold demands (rapid runs, leaps and double-stops) and for the way the movement drives to a brilliant, exhilarating close. Throughout, savour the sheer unembarrassed beauty of the writing: this is Romanticism that survived into the twentieth century and went to the movies.