This mid-price reissue of a 1996 Chandos release features two early and two late Korngold compositions. All the music is imaginative, superbly crafted, and highly entertaining, qualities that Korngold’s music had attained in full before the composer was far into his teens. However, the listener can’t help noticing that Korngold did not evolve much as a composer after he turned 20–for the most part he is content to avoid the emotional depth usually associated with the greatest music. It might be a bit unfair to single out as an example the little Military March that opens the disc, for it was meant to be a pleasing, untroubled trifle. But from the music you wouldn’t know that in 1917, when it was written, most of Korngold’s fellow Austrian 20-year-olds were marching off to slaughter.
Korngold tries a darker emotional tone in the 12-minute, single-movement Cello Concerto, expanded from music for Korngold’s last film score, Deception (Warner, 1946). In the film it was supposed to be the music of an egomaniacal composer played by Claude Rains. The concert version is very interesting, with a nice andante tune in the middle, but it goes no deeper than was permitted by a stock love-triangle plot. The Symphonic Serenade is a lovely piece with nicely varied string sonorities–again, it doesn’t display a wide emotional range, but that’s not often called for in a serenade.
The most intriguing piece is the Left Hand Piano Concerto of 1923–the first of a line of such concertos commissioned by the war-amputee pianist Paul Wittgenstein. Since Wittgenstein did not play it much, it languished unknown for decades. It is a one-movement work of symphonic scope and emotion. It and the Serenade deserve to be heard. The performances are very fine. Chandos’ recording is more than acceptable, but hall ambience is mixed in a way that makes the stage sound turn harder and less transparent.
