‘The Adventures’ must refer to Korngold’s famous score for The Adventures of Robin Hood, because as Barrie Gavin’s documentary reveals, he hardly had any of his own. Born to wealth and influence, son of Vienna’s leading critic, he developed an astonishing talent with minimal study, was performed by giants like Bruno Walter, and, becoming a feted film composer, lived out the Nazi era in Hollywood luxury. Only his ostracism in post-war Vienna adds a tinge of tragedy to this charmed existence, and, like many conservative artists, his subsequent dismissal by the avant-garde as mere kitsch. Where the documentary scores is in defining the peculiar nature of his talent, an extraordinary, spontaneous facility with melody and orchestration that was also his creative downfall, so fully formed it had little scope to develop. The musical extracts include fragments from his Second Symphony, never completed, and only Anne Sofie von Otter’s effortful rendering of ‘Marietta’s Song’ (for soprano!) from Die tote Stadt mars the end.

DVD documentaries benefit from more substantial musical features, however. Here the two concertos are sensitively rendered by conductor Hugh Wolff and soloists Leonidas Kavakos and Quirine Viersen, avoiding the excessive schmalz which deforms Korngold’s superlatively fluent melodic lines. The piano pieces, written between ages 10 and 13, demonstrate an alarmingly mature musical personality, audible even among the influence of Grieg and others.

One could wish for more from his operas, and his songs (and a better leaflet!), but this still makes a fine case for a genuine, if limited, genius. ‘Mehr Korn als Gold!’ runs the famous crack, but at least the gold is real.