The Korngold Collection
Pacifica Quartet; Orion Weiss; Milena Pajaro van de Stadt; Eric Kim
Cedille CDR 90000 240 (cedillerecords.org/albums/the-korngold-collection)
Having created a legacy of gorgeous operatic and instrumental works, including four of the five pieces in this two-CD set, Erich Wolfgang Korngold fled Austria in 1938, just ahead of the Nazi Anschluss, to flourish anew as a Hollywood film composer.
Beauties abound in this album’s nearly two-and-a-half hours of music. In the richly-textured String Sextet in D Major, Op.10 by the teenaged Korngold, two joyously surging movements frame the moody Adagio and the Intermezzo’s charming Viennese waltz. Korngold’s signature combination of long-lined, achingly beautiful melodies and jaunty cheerfulness illuminate his Piano Quintet in E Major, Op.15 (incorporating themes from his song cycle Lieder des Abschieds) and his pre-Hollywood string quartets, No.1 in A Major, Op.16 and No.2 in E-Flat Major, Op.26.
As with his other final masterworks – the much-loved Violin Concerto and still under-performed Symphony – Korngold drew from his film scores for his String Quartet No.3 in D Major, Op.34. The Trio of the spiky Scherzo uses a nostalgia-laden theme from Between Two Worlds, the tender slow movement is based on The Sea Wolf’s haunting love music, and the bumptious Finale features a lighthearted tune from Deception.
Strangely, despite their loveliness, these five works are seldom heard in the concert hall. Bravi, then, to the Pacifica Quartet, quartet-in-residence at Indiana University, pianist Orion Weiss, violist Milena Pájaro-van de Stadt and cellist Eric Kim for their stirring performances that should help bring these unjustly neglected works to a wider audience.
