Form and Fantasy Works for Violin and Piano
Gavin Plumley
According to his detractors, Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born with a silver (even gold) spoon in his mouth. Certainly, the composer’s father Julius’s role as chief music critic of the Neue Freie Presse in Vienna guaranteed him audiences with the leading cultural figures of the time, including Mahler, Strauss, and Puccini. And yet, for his supporters, both then and now, Korngold’s talent entirely matched early interest in his work—from a very young age, he revealed technical mastery as well as a generous gift for melody. Korngold’s music for Much Ado About Nothing dates from the same period as his hugely successful opera Die tote Stadt, written with his father as librettist (albeit under a judicious pseudonym). A production of Shakespeare’s play had been planned for the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1919, but production costs ran high and it had to be mounted instead at the Schlosstheater at Schönbrunn the following year. Korngold provided the score, but then had to adapt the incidental music when the run was extended and the original chamber orchestra (including members of the Vienna Philharmonic) was no longer available. This second iteration provided the basis for a series of later suites. Cutting the chattering Overture, the violin and piano version opens with “The Maiden in the Bridal Chamber,” a movement that originally accompanied Hero’s wedding preparations. The music hints at
