ICSM Online Journal > Reviews

Korngold: Centenary Celebrations on the South Bank, October-November 2007
reviewed by Michael Eagleton
Posted 23 April 2008

Anniversaries are strange animals. In November 1957 Erich Wolfgang Korngold died in Hollywood. One would have thought that, in the German-speaking countries at least, this particular anniversary would have been marked as an opportunity for a genuine reassessment of this once most performed yet much maligned figure of the years before 1933. Not so. True, concert programmes have thrown in the odd Violin or Cello Concerto and one or two other orchestral works have made sporadic appearances, but in the 2007-8 season Die tote Stadt is receiving only one new production - in Bonn in January - and only one revival - the Willy Decker production in Vienna (originally from Salzburg and Amsterdam) which is visiting Covent Garden in January 2009. But of Die Kathrin, or the two early one-acters, or of Korngold's magnum opus, the 1927 Das Wunder der Heliane, there is not a sign.

All credit, then, to our own Jessica Duchen, whose Phaidon biography of Korngold complements the earlier larger study by Brendon Carroll, for pulling so many strings in the background (a concerted heave, more likely) that a celebratory programme of events was mounted on the South Bank in November, involving among others the Nash Ensemble, Anne Sofie von Otter, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, culminating in a Royal Festival Hall concert performance of Heliane under the baton of Vladimir Jurowski.

We began on the afternoon of 27 October in the Queen Elizabeth Hall with a showing of Barrie Gavin's 2001 rather cosy documentary Erich Korngold: Adventures of a Wunderkind (available now on an Arthaus DVD) - beautifully filmed, and with interesting contributions from Korngold's family and musicians including the conductor Hugh Wolff with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. A sequence of archive film showing Korngold at the piano at a Hollywood party improvising on the the hit from Tote Stadt was a fascinating highlight, showing a player of incredible ability. Yet the film as a whole seems to gloss over the crucial issues at the heart of Korngold's problematic career. Why exactly was the relationship with his father Julius - feared critic of the Neue freie Presse in Vienna in the first years of the century - so difficult? Why, indeed, did the Korngolds come to be in Hollywood at all, and what became of his houses and possessions in Austria?

Answers in part came during the round table discussion which followed, where the two Korngold brains, Duchen and Carroll, were joined by Erik Levi and Benjamin Wallfisch, with Carroll's immense knowledge and ready wit a pleasure as always.

The Nash Ensemble's early-evening concert juxtaposed three works directly imbued with the Vienna of the turn of the century into which Korngold arrived, in 1901, at the age of four when the family moved from Brno. The earliest of the three, ironically, was the student A minor Piano Quartet by Mahler of 1876, which one felt could easily have been written in 1920, the year when Korngold began work on his Piano Quintet in E. In between came the Brahms A minor Clarinet Trio, dating from 1891. Needless to say, the Nash with their particular innate musicianship delivered all three with loving care, - Ian Brown especially deserving a mention for his despatch of Korngold's fiendish piano part.

Another telling juxtaposition came in the programme which the London Philharmonic offered at the Royal Festival Hall on 14 November, in which Jurowski conducted Zemlinsky's 1934 Sinfonietta and the Sixth Symphony of Shostakovich of 1939, with a centrepiece consisting of the Korngold Violin Concerto with Nikolaj Znaider as soloist. It could be argued that we have father Julius to thank for the Concerto, since it was at his suggestion that the contract which Erich secured with Warner Brothers secured his rights to his own music, and thus the possibility of recycling material in later orchestral works. The Violin Concerto, though thematically almost entirely culled from film music, still holds together wonderfully as a piece of unashamedly romantic fiddle writing, and Znaider was alert to all its nuances and introspections, with Jurowski and orchestra in close attendance. Even the little jig of the finale, which can on occasion outstay its welcome, seemed to be kept in check yet retain its cheekiness.

And so to Heliane, at the RFH on 21 November. The first thing to be said is that it is a long time since I have felt such excitement and expectation in the foyers, even before the concert started. And while not quite a sell-out, there were very few empty seats. The audience at least, one felt, was on Korngold's side. But, like the ship, damned to ill luck when the launching champagne bottle fails to smash, Heliane has never had an easy passage, and here circumstances conspired against it again. First, it was surely unwise to place the soloists in the Choir, so that to reach us their voices had to carry over an orchestra mammoth by even Korngold's standards. Then there was the sorry vocal state of Andreas Schmidt as the Ruler. Normally a fine and dependable artist, Schmidt was clearly out of sorts. The effect was obviously dispiriting for all concerned, but slowly Jarowski managed to raise the temperature, and by the Second Act the Korngold everyone expected was beginning to shine through. The Third Act, where the best music is concentrated, was shattering. Patricia Racette as Heliane was as sensitive and clear as she could be, and if her big Act 2 aria 'Ich ging zu ihn' disappointed slightly, the double-cream voice that its ecstasy requires is, after all, given to very few. Michael Hendrick, a young American tenor of immense promise, found his feet too, and his Stranger grew in stature and intensity. Sir Willard White and Bob Tear made welcome appearances as the Porter and the Blind Judge.

As for Jurowski and the London Philharmonic, this was an evening which confirmed an exciting new partnership in the making. Firstly, the commitment and preparation had clearly been exemplary. Neither orchestra nor conductor is likely to have Heliane on their music-stands again, and obviously relished the opportunity for a gorgeous display of colour and virtuosity.

Here, surely, is the essence of the Korngold problem. Young Erich arrived on the scene as a precocious teenage talent, and remained just that. Whether his career would have developed along more radical paths had his overbearing father not been at his back every inch of the way, we shall never know. Korngold himself remarked in later life that one day he would have to stop being a Wunderkind and decide what to do. It was certainly the case that the success of Heliane was compromised from the start by Korngold senior's machinations against the rival Jonny spielt Auf. For the moment, Jonny has the upper hand.

But is the opera unstageable, as most commentators appeared to suggest? I do not subscribe to this notion at all. What Heliane needs first of all is space - it is a piece for a big house with big resources, and it must have room to breathe. Then, it needs imagination, the vision of an artistic team to look beyond the gimmickry of bare light bulbs, overturned chairs and crashed aeroplanes. As with Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten, there is a real danger that it would be killed stone dead by extra layers of symbolism. Clarity and simplicity are of the essence. Think for a moment what, for example, a Jean-Pierre Ponnelle might have done, to name but one director for whom such virtues were a trademark, and with modern stage equipment and lighting not available to Hamburg in 1927.

Sometime, somewhere, it will happen. In the meantime, maybe a darkened room is the best place for this huge, mysterious, flawed yet beguiling piece to work its magic.

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