SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

The Korngolds - Cliché, Critic and Composer: 28 November  2007 to 18 May  2008, Palais Eskeles, Jewish Museum, Vienna (JFL)

Erich Korngold in 1910 (Age 12)

The music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold has enjoyed a little renaissance over the last decade or two:  he is no longer the neglected, unknown master, the hidden Wunderkind of 20^th century classical music. The point is proven by the pleasant fact that his entire œuvre is available on commercial recordings – from eighth different versions of the Violin Concerto (Heifetz, Perlman, Shaham, Mutter, to name only the most prominent accounts – while Kavakos and Hahn offer it on DVD) to a proud rendition of “The Goose-liver at the Durschnitz-residency” (a song for baritone taken on by Dietrich Henschel).

“Korngold 101” is easily encapsulated in the words: precocious teen and Wunderkind who composed music too beautiful  to be taken seriously at a time when modernism swept the cultural stage. A composer of highly successful film music in his years in Hollywood – and consequently snubbed by the “real classical music” ‘elite’.  That’s good enough for a start – but just how much more complicated, conflicted, twisted, and interesting Korngold’s story is can be experienced at the current exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Vienna that will run through May 18^th.

The first point is made by the exhibition’s title: “The Korngolds”. This is not about Erich Wolfgang Korngold alone, but in almost equal measure about his father Julius Leopold  too. (Little Erich was given his middle name in honor of Mozart –which considering his father’s middle name and the path that Erich would take, is a touching bit of irony.)

In order to understand Erich Korngold’s situation as a composer in Vienna, it is essential to have a grasp of just how dominant a figure his father was. Chief music critic for the Neue Freie Presse and successor to Eduard Hanslick, he commanded not just the most important position in Viennese music criticism, he was the arbiter of what was good and bad: in essence he was the pope of musical taste. Not quite able to speak ex cathedra, perhaps, his word carried weight, so much weight  indeed, that his opinions could make artistic life in Vienna impossible for all those  arousing his ire. In that sense, Julius Korngold not only shaped the musical life of Vienna but also of Berlin –  to which all those  who could not get a leg on the ground in hostile Vienna, duly fled.

It is one of the most beautiful ironies in music criticism that there were never before nor ever after classical music critics who prepared themselves more diligently for their reviews than Hanslick and Julius Korngold. Both  were more than knowledgeable about music, music theory, and the work they were going to review. Whenever possible, every new work was played through – several times on the piano and painstakingly analyzed before being reviewed. Yet, despite this profundity and seriousness in preparation and self-perception, neither Hanslick or Korngold nor most of their erudite contemporaries were – amid much very perceptive criticism – able to overcome polemical and ideologically tainted attacks on what they thought “should not be”. Those of Hanslick’s judgments that now seem ill-considered (Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, Wagner, etc.) are more famous than his ample insight.  Korngold loved everything that was in any way related to Gustav Mahler and otherwise more or less hated everything that Hanslick would not have liked either.

Being the son of the main music critic in the most important city for classical music, and also one of the greatest composing prodigies in music history, was another cute twist of fate for Erich Korngold. Korngold Sr. didn’t trust his potential bias at first and sought the opinion of 40 leading critics everywhere except Vienna to judge his 11-year old son’s ballet piano score to The Snowman. The responses ranged from baffled enthusiasm to bewilderment. One critic in Budapest was so enthused, that he went public with his ‘finding’ – and before long (against the will of Papa Korngold), The Snowman was given a big premiere in a gala performance honoring the Emperor’s name day (October 4^th, 1910).

Julius Korngold

The Korngold exhibition, based on a concept of Michael Haas (known to classical music aficionados who read the small print in liner notes as the producer of Decca’s “Entartete Musik” series), shows us the life of Korngold and his father from the earliest days until the composer's death in 1957, dividing it more or less into seven stages and eight rooms. The influence and power of Julius is illustrated with facsimiles of the Neue Freie Presse (where Korngold had the lower third of the first three pages (!) to write about whatever he chose) and loud interjections of some of Korngold’s more pointedly phrased  strong opinions, via speakers that interrupt everything you might try to do. Even three rooms further ob, you can still hear his cantankerous howling about atonal music. That you couldn't escape his opinions and ideas – not in Vienna of the time, at any rate – is the deliberate, unsubtle and well-made point.

Eric Korngold’s (greatest, or at least biggest) opera Das Wunder der Heliane (Decca’s re-issue of which I recently reviewed) gets its own room – which might seem rather much to us, if we don’t know the work or how important it was at its time. It was given 45 performances between the two opera houses in Hamburg and Vienna. Posterity has obscured our view of Das Wunder a little with the contemporary and greater success of Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf, but the two operas originally pitched against each other as equals. The monopolist (and originally state owned, Ed) manufacturer Austrian Tabacco issued two cigarette brands: an unfiltered brand named Jonny – and the nicely packaged, filtered and perfumed cigarettes called Heliane. With the economics of smoking mimicking art, Jonny is still available, and Heliane, not.)

Not the least to – temporarily – escape his unbearably overbearing father, Erich Korngold ‘fled’ to Hollywood for one season where Max Reinhardt, his collaborator on many Strauss-Operetta projects, persuaded the composer to work with him again, this time on Warner Brother’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Once Hollywood had noticed Korngold -  at his arrival easily the most talented musician to work in film -  his future options looked bright when he eventually had to leave Vienna not to escape his father’s influence (Julius joined Korngold and his wife, Luzi at the last possible moment)  but Hitler. His career for film is well known and well documented in the exhibit. The Sea Hawk, Captain Blood and  Robin Hood are all there – as is Kings Row which was of course the break-through hit for the 40^th President of the United States.

A myriad of interesting information can be found in this lovingly presented exhibit as well as the thorough 200 page catalog that comes with a CD of important or personal excerpts of Korngold’s music and his own playing. Curious factoids emerge: Korngold’s Cello Concerto  for example, was premiered by the Hollywood String Quartet’s Eleanor Slatkin – while she was pregnant with Leonard Slatkin’s little brother Fred (Zlotkin). (Hence Korngold’s joke of Allegro con embrio.)

When Korngold died on November 29^th in 1957 the program of the memorial concert at Schoenberg Hall, University of California (one of several items lent by the Library of Congress’s Music Division) lists Louis Kaufman as the participating violinist. Kaufman played violin in many of Korngold’s movies, but his other claim to fame is having been the first violinist to record the Four Seasons.

The exhibition and catalogue are presented in German and English throughout and runs through May 18^th.

Jens F. Laurson

Photos of Erich and Julius Korngold © Korngold Family Estate.

Poster of the Film Kings Row, Warner Brothers 1942, modified Public Domain.

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