Korngold’s violin and
piano works make for a satisfying disc,
an option now taken up by an increasing
number of performers and companies.
The latest entrant to the lists is Joseph
Lin with pianist Benjamin Loeb, two
young musicians based in America, and
they give us the popular Much Ado About
Nothing suite as well as the dizzyingly
youthful Op. 6 Sonata – one of those
works that makes you understand his
contemporaries’ amazement at his precocity
– as well as songful morceaux derived
from Die tote Stadt or from songs.
It’s good to see the
increasing representation of the Suite
on disc – violinists respond to its
warmth, vivacity and charm and with
good reason, but none more so than Toscha
Seidel whose (at the time unissued)
1941 recording with the composer has
been resurrected by Biddulph. Lin is
an attractive player, fine in the higher
positions, pristine and almost virginal
in the Maiden in the Bridal Chamber
opening movement (not inappropriately).
But whereas he is immaculate and waltz-like,
Seidel is sensuous and evocative with
an enveloping tone that lifts the music
beyond the merely charming. Admittedly
the Devil himself would have a hard
job matching Seidel’s lascivious tonal
splendour and his ringing pizzicati
in Dogberry and Verges outgun all competition
– martial and abrasive – more than helped
by Korngold’s incendiary pianism (powder
keg bass accents, etched sharp as a
cutlass). All this is characterised
with utter commitment. Contemporary
players can’t help but seem dainty and
halfhearted in comparison. I liked the
way Lin floats his tone in the Garden
Scene – the one movement from the Suite
that’s never lacked for advocates –
but Seidel’s voluptuary intensity, or
Heifetz’s razor expressivity, are part
of a different and I think more authentic
aesthetic. I don’t have the score but
Korngold and Seidel’s Masquerade has
some textual additions, an opening piano
chordal flourish, that I actually prefer
to what I take to be the published version
that opens simply with the violin hornpipe.
The Op.6 Sonata is
the work of a fifteen year old but what
a fifteen year old. Written for Flesch,
no less, it’s a big, bold thirty-five
minute, four-movement work that pulsates
with harmonic sophistication, lyric
inventiveness and emotive generosity.
If it never entirely convinces as a
statement in its entirety, it nevertheless
clearly established the young Korngold
as a major writer for the medium. The
confident astringencies that pepper
the opening movement are balanced by
melodic attractions – heightened by
the registral leaps Korngold asks of
the fiddle. Lin and Loeb score well
in the delightful trio of the Scherzo
and sway into the sprightly variations
Korngold crafted from a 1911 song.
Elsewhere they respond
well to Korngold’s demands though never
really sweepingly enough – the Serenade
from Der Schneemann could go with greater
intensity and the Caprice Fantastique
is just a bit polite. Throughout in
fact they seem just too well groomed
and lacking in ardency for this fulsome
music. I’m sure many will respond to
their refinement and dexterity but I
tend to prefer a little pepper with
my Korngold, especially when the acoustic,
though warm, tends to blunt and blur
the piano.
Jonathan Woolf
see also review
by Ian Lace
Joseph Lin (violin)