Born in Moravia (now the Czech Republic), Erich Korngold grew up in Vienna in a household filled with music and musicians.  His father, Julius, worked for the Neue Frei Presse (New Free Press) for three decades, and was regarded as the “dean of European music critics.”  He named his son, (Erich) Wolfgang, after one of his musical heroes, Mozart.  And like his namesake, the young Erich Wolfgang was a piano prodigy of exceptional talents and began impressing the music world by the age of seven.  Before he was nine, he had already composed several works, prompting his famous father to ask none other than Gustav Mahler to assess his son’s talents.  Mahler was so astonished that he called young Erich a genius on par with Mendelssohn and Mozart, and in the ensuing years, he became Erich’s musical mentor.  By his late teens, Korngold had composed two operas that filled the halls and brought rave reviews.  Another opera, art songs, and orchestral works followed, all meeting serious praise.  Korngold was poised to own the music world, not only in Europe, but even across the ocean.  

In 1934, the film director, Max Reinhardt, invited Korngold to visit Hollywood to write a film score for the movie adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Korngold accepted, as Hollywood movies were all the rage in Europe.  Korngold’s unparalleled success with that Shakespeare adaptation led to successive projects and more travel to America. During another of Korngold’s visits in 1938, however, Hitler began his ugly part in history, and Korngold soon found it impossible to return home to Austria.  As Korngold recalled, “We thought of ourselves as Austrians, until Hitler made us Jewish.”  In protest, Korngold vowed not to write anything but film scores until Hitler was vanquished.  But for Korngold, movie music wasn’t such a deviation from his operas and concert hall music – he approached film scoring very much like writing an opera, using recurring themes and Wagnerian-like leitmotifs to accompany characters and plot themes.  His rich scores won several Oscars and transformed and elevated the quality of film music forevermore.  Ironically, that very success eventually branded him as being merely a “Hollywood churner of tunes” and a “Romantic throwback.”  By 1940, one could only hear a Korngold score by watching a movie. The once extraordinary prodigy was being forgotten in his own lifetime.

But during this time another great virtuoso and fellow émigré, violinist Bronislav Huberman (1882 – 1947), was trying to convince Korngold to write a violin concerto for him.  When World War II ended and Hitler was defeated, Korngold finally agreed to Huberman’s invitation in 1945, but he did so with an agenda – to silence his “movie-score-bashing” critics and restore his reputation as a “serious” composer.  He threw himself into writing this Violin Concerto, and that same year it premiered with the St. Louis Symphony, but with Jascha Heifitz as the soloist (not Huberman, since he was no longer up for the task by 1945).  Korngold dedicated the work to his mentor’s widow, Alma Mahler.

Like Rachmaninoff, Korngold’s musical inclinations lay in the late-Romantic style, which is very much a part of this masterful Concerto.  The beginning, marked Andante nobile (slowly and nobly) immediately introduces the soloist playing a gorgeous theme that climbs, bit by bit, into the clouds.  When the orchestra gets its chance on its own with this theme, it becomes majestic with particularly noble horns.  The movement almost continually showcases the soloist in a kind of rhapsodic exploration, through beautiful song to flights of fantasy, sometimes meltingly sentimental – such as the soloist’s luxuriantly lyrical second theme at about three minutes in – and sometimes filled with zest.  The breadth of the Concerto’s soundscapes is cinematic in the best sense, giving the listener the sensation of being transported into a fantastic world.  Korngold was a wizard with orchestral colors, too.  Particularly rich is the prominent part for the vibraphone (a metal-barred keyboard percussion instrument) which is at times almost a co-soloist with the violin throughout the Concerto, but especially in this first movement, lending a rich and mellow glow around the soloist’s stratospheric singing.  As for virtuosity, Korngold’s very inventive cadenza is a showcase for technical prowess in the service of musicality.  The ending bars are particularly imaginative – just at about 8:30 minutes, the soloist plays a series of wildly frenetic passages upwards, each time answered by the orchestral strings playing wildly frenetic passages downwards, creating the exhilarating effect of being in the middle of a fireworks display.  The last few bars then crescendo in energy until one final swoop ends with a fortissimo (very loud) final note.

The middle movement, Andante (slowly), is a luscious nocturnal Romanze (love song) – it’s not hard to imagine lovers devoting themselves to each other under a full moon upon the wisps of the night fragrances of lilies.  The movement is filled with dreamy atmospheric effects from the vibraphone, glockenspiel, celeste (a keyboard instrument that strikes high-pitched metallic bars), and harp.  The solo violin part, as beautifully melodic as it is, may demand the most here of all the movements, for the soloist must soar romantically but with dignified reserve.  

The finale, Allegro assai vivace (fast and very lively) is an all-out joyful folksong jig, full of rollicking fun and tunefulness, and equally challenging for both orchestra and soloist.  The movement is structured, essentially, as a set of variations on that jig theme.  One of its genius variations happens at about one minute – a beautifully lyrical theme floats out of the solo violin, which is in fact the quick jig played at a much slower speed.  The whole movement is sweepingly joyous and fun.  But it’s not lacking in grandeur – at about five minutes in, the soloist takes a breather while the horns play that lyrical, slowed-down jig with as much pageantry and majesty as you will ever hear – it’s one of the most spine-tingling moments in the entire Concerto.  Following this, both soloist and orchestra share a moment of reflective beauty, and then begin racing to the end, in waves of energy, tempo accelerations, and solo violin pyrotechnics, until the Concerto’s final, exuberant bars.  

Given Korngold’s resentment over the disrespect he was shown from the concert hall because of his film composing, it might seem ironic that the Concerto borrows heavily from his film music.  But Korngold’s film themes were as richly crafted as any Romantic melody was from the more “serious” composers.  Thus, Korngold apparently sought to prove the worth of his work for Hollywood by showing how magically “Classical” they were all on their own, even without the silver screen – and today’s popularity of this wonderful Concerto proves Korngold’s point.  The themes he repurposed are as follows: the lovely opening theme in the first movement (played immediately by the soloist and the orchestra with its noble horns) comes from the film Another Dawn (1937); the first movement’s luxuriantly lyrical second theme from Juarez (1939); the beautiful main theme in the second movement was borrowed from the Oscar-winning score from Anthony Adverse (1936); and the jig (and lovely slow rendition of it) in the finale came from The Prince and the Pauper (1937).  The Concerto’s premiere was fairly well received, but it wasn’t until after his death, in the 1970’s, that his music began claiming its place in the repertoire and emerging more regularly in the concert hall.  And deservedly so.