Erich Wolfgang KORNGOLD (1897-1957)
The String Quartets: No. 1 in A major, Op. 16 (1920-23) [32:20]; No.
2 in E flat major, Op. 26 (1933) [21:59]; No. 3 in D major, Op. 34 (1944-45)
[25:24]
Doric String Quartet (Alex Redington (violin); Jonathan Stone (violin); Simon
Tandree (viola); John Myerscough (cello))
rec. Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk, 5-7 April 2010. DDD
CHANDOS CHAN 10611 [79:57]
Korngold and the string quartet. It’s not a medium you might link with
him; at least not if you associate Korngold with Hollywood film music. Korngold
and the grand opera - well, yes. Korngold and the symphony - certainly - although
there is only one. Korngold’s fame for music of voluptuous, Straussian
excess and glorious saturated lyricism hardly prepares you for a composer
who wrote three such four-movement works from his twenties to his mid-forties.
Short of the string trio the quartet is among the most ascetic and demanding
of formats. Korngold was equal to the challenge and wove and shaped the medium
to his style.
From the composer’s perspective of 1920-23 he already had behind him
operas, ambitious orchestral music and chamber music. To write a string quartet
was one of the most natural things for a young master-composer living in Vienna.
He had just finished the opera Die Tote Stadt and within the last decade
as a teenager he had written the grand Sinfonietta. The First Quartet
was premiered by the famed Rosé Quartet in 1924 in Vienna; in London
in 1925. It is a loftily skilled work of warm and singing release. It uses
themes of a caste that will be familiar from the film scores and opera; indeed
a melody in the finale was later used in his opera Die Kathrin (1932-37).
We hear a lavish mix which should appeal if you already like the quartets
by Smetana, Marx, Schoeck, Bowen or Howells.
The Second Quartet also radiates romantic warmth from its four movements including
the affectionate first with its stabbing Beethovenian fate motif. The irresistibly
smiling Intermezzo takes us back to the café culture delight’s
of Smetana 1 while there is haunting strength and vulnerable delicacy in the
affecting Larghetto. The finale again hymns the delights of Vienna
and its all-pervasive waltz. It was also premiered by the Rosé.
The Third Quartet is dedicated to Bruno Walter “in admiration and friendship”.
It was premiered by the Roth Quartet in LA in 1946. More spare in its textures,
the warmth has been tempered by his forced exile to Hollywood as a consequence
of Hitler’s annexation of Austria. The spiky Scherzo can stand
representative of the whole work. The innocent smile of the earlier two works
will never quite return. Film score themes from Devotion and Between
Two Worlds are used. There’s still warmth - how could it not be
there - but experience of world events was bound to change the accent. The
deeply moving Sostenuto is wistful - even melancholic. He summons up
the world of the earlier quartets with music of Beethovenian fate-bound declamatory
grit and rousing amiability. The Doric project virile vigour and their sound
is most powerfully and engagingly captured. The ASV recordings by the Flesch
Quartet (review;
review)
are a shade warmer and the listener is two or three steps back from the music-making.
The ASV version uses two discs and adds the Sextet. The logic of having all
three quartets on one disc is unanswerable. Korngold biographer Brendan
G Carroll wrote the detailed notes for both the Chandos and the ASV. If
you are reading up on Korngold let me put in a word also for Jessica Duchen’s
more compact and amazingly fluent Phaidon biography of the composer. Carroll’s
is, on the other hand, skilled, informed by years of research, authoritative
and exhaustive. In Sibelian terms Carroll is Tawastjerna or Barnett (Andrew)
to Duchen’s Guy Rickards. Such a pity that neither of these Korngold
biographies are in print.
Stylish and emotionally adroit recordings of Korngold’s three quartets.
Go for it!
Rob Barnett