Many people have a soft spot for the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold—usually through acquaintance with it via movie soundtracks or recordings. The very qualities that made him the ideal film composer told against him in the opera house, although Violanta and Die tote Stadt had big successes when they were first given in 1916 and 1920. Whereas in a film one or two big themes can be used and adapted as variations to underscore the drama, or as a hidden reminder of earlier scenes, in the operas the repetitions and lush orchestrations make the plots seem even more absurd hokum than they are.
These recordings come from radio broadcasts, the earliest of which was conducted by the composer. Those familiar with the famous 1924 recording of Tauber and Lehmann in the duet from Die tote Stadt (now available on EMI (CD) CDH7 64029-2, 3/92) will find the singing of Anton Dermota and Ilona Steingruber disappointingly off-key and unsteady. The pace is schnecken-tempo, but no doubt the early version had to be cut and hurried to fit on to one side of the 78. Steingruber (the first Lulu on record in the American Columbia recording of the opera issued in the States in 1952—released in the UK by Philips, 8/61, and deleted after a short time) is much better in that other great Lehmann show-piece from Das Wunder der Heliane, her projection and timbre having something of Welitsch. Alfred Poell is a little wobbly in Pierrot’s serenade from Die tote Stadt, the song with which Richard Mayr used to stop the show in Vienna.
The greatest curiosities are the six extracts from Korngold’s fifth and last opera, Die Kathrin. Composed in the late 1930s, it had been scheduled for performance in Vienna in 1938, but due to circumstances imposed by the Anschluss was not given until the following year, in Stockholm. It has a song which might provide a useful recital-platform encore for ambitious tenors: “Ich bin ein Liedersanger”; Rosl Schwaiger and Dermota are charming in the rather Lehar-like night-club scene, and Dermota ends the disc with the hero’s homecoming aria, in which he tells his story to a young man who is unaware that the singer is his own father. Such cloying sentimentality was out of fashion in the 1950s and 1960s when these numbers were recorded. Korngold died in 1957 believing that his music would be forgotten, but it has come back largely through the efforts of the record companies.
The latest item, the aria from Korngold’s first stage work, Der Ring des Polykrates, a Viennese one-act comedy, is sung with a stream of silvery tone by the young Gundula Janowitz: I wonder if this comes from a complete performance; if so it would be nice to hear it all, since three of Korngold’s other operas have been recorded complete (Die tote Stadt and Violanta—on RCA and CBS—and recently, Das Wunder der Heliane by Decca). I have always thought that Die tote Stadt would have been a good addition to the English National Opera’s repertory. Nowadays this seems unlikely, but those brought up on a diet of Hollywood epics like Captain Blood and King’s Row will enjoy this selection from Korngold’s previous incarnation. There are no texts or translations, or specific recording details, which detracts from what is, after all, a somewhat specialized item.'