PORTRAIT OF ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD – March 22nd

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The 20th Century Song Foundation http://www.songfoundation.com presents

PORTRAIT OF ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD

22 March at 8.15 pm in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam

Soprano Charlotte Margiono, baritone Konrad Jarnot and pianist Reinild Mees will perform rarely heard songs by Korngold.

Caspar Wintermans will give an introduction. Nine songs have recently been
discovered and will be premiered on this occasion.

Korngold moved to Vienna when he was four, his father succeeding the
famous Eduard Hanslick as musical critic at the Neue Freie Presse. Young
Erich played the piano from a very early age and became one of the most
remarkable composing child prodigies in world history.

“My favorite
instrument is the orchestra,” he used to say. His first symphonic works
were conducted by the likes of Arthur Nikisch and Richard Strauss, his
chamber pieces and operas–including Die tote Stadt (1920)–brought him
international fame. In 1934 the director Max Reinhardt, who was working in
the United States, invited him to Hollywood to arrange Mendelssohn’s
incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the film version
Reinhardt was making. Korngold accepted the task and established himself
quickly as one of Hollywood’s most prestigious composers of film music,
winning a couple of Oscars. The artist’s life and that of his family was
saved by these excursions into film music, for America provided a shelter
to him and his family after Hitler had marched into Austria. Korngold
vowed not to compose concert works again until the tyrant was removed from
the political stage; the income he gained at the studios of Warner Bros.
was used to support other political exiles from Europe. On his return to
the continent Korngold (a naturalized US citizen since 1943) found it
impossible to make his comeback as a “serious” artist in the changed
artistic climate where his lush late-romantic style was labeled
“old-fashioned.” When he died in Los Angeles he believed himself to be
forgotten, but a new generation has re-discovered this magnificent artist
whose one aim in life was to create beauty and provide pleasure.