Korngold’s lush, romantic, youthful
music is the ideal vehicle to show off
the considerable virtuoso and expressive
talents of Joseph Lin featured as the
Laureate violinist in this new ‘Naxos
Laureate Series’ release. The young
Lin has already successfully toured
across the globe and picked up an impressive
list of prizes including the top place
in the 2001 Michael Hill World Violin
Competition.
The main work in this programme is Korngold’s
Sonata for Violin and Piano. Spanning
some 36 minutes, it is an immense achievement
for a youth in his mid-teens, the melodic
writing so complex and sophisticated
that it sounds much bigger, almost as
though one is listening to an orchestral
composition. As Richard Whitehouse says
in his notes, Korngold, like Richard
Strauss, clearly identified the violin
with the human voice, its material lyrical,
stirring and evocative; and the piano
writing is no less effective, passionate,
poetic and expressive. Interestingly,
in this context, pianist Benjamin Loeb,
making an ideal partner for Lin, is
also an accomplished orchestral conductor.
The opening movement, marked, Ben
moderato, ma con passione, appeals
directly to the senses, romantic, passionate,
it yearns and pleads and is occasionally
defiant, disturbing and shadowy. The
second movement combines a cavorting
scherzo, that bounces and cavorts with
swashbuckling swagger, with a Trio that
has a waltz tune, marked ‘with deepest
feeling’, which comes from the Vier
kleinen fröhlichen Walzern
for piano. The following Adagio’s
passion is no less deeply felt, while
the concluding Allegretto is
an engaging sequence of variations on
a Korngold song, Schneeglöckchen
(Snowdrops).
Korngold’s charming, outgoing Much
Ado About Nothing music transfers
very well to violin and piano. In the
opening ‘Maiden in the Bridal Chamber’
Lin and Loeb wittily suggest the bride’s
sentimental expectancy and coy modesty.
The comic, grizzled and argumentative
pomposity of ‘Dogberry and Verges’ is
equally well observed while all the
sylvan romanticism of the ‘Garden Scene’
is nicely evoked. The short suite is
rounded off with a vivacious ‘Masquerade’.
The shorter pieces all shine. Those
favourite melodies from Die Tote
Stadt, Pierrot’s and Marrietta’s
Lieds sound fresh and gorgeously expressive
– just listen, for example to the piano
part as it so evocatively sets the scene
along the Bruges canals for the Pierrot
Lied. How Lin can touch the heart! A
darker hued beauty is the tragic, melancholic,
resigned music from Das Wunder der
Heliane The ‘Serenade’ from Der
Schneemann is all sweet sentimentality
– an amazing feat from boy genius, Korngold,
barely into his teens. Finally another
fine virtuosic and wonderfully expressive
rendering of the Caprice Fantastique;
this is Korngold’s arrangement of
his own Wichtelmännchen
(The Goblins) from his 1910 set of Fairy
Tale Pictures. The mischievous,
ill-tempered, character of the goblins
and their awkward gait is quite brilliantly
evoked in a marvellously witty and sardonic
performance.
Excellent virtuosic and expressive performances
of some of Korngold’s most enchanting
music.
Ian Lace
Joseph Lin (violin) and Benjamin Loeb (piano)