Korngold himself identified three phases of his career: as the teenage prodigy whose precocious brilliance amazed musicians such as Strauss, Mahler and Schnabel, and whose works the greatest conductors of the day vied to perform; as the composer of the opera Die tote Stadt, written in 1920 at the age of 23 and performed all over the world; and, from 1935, the reluctant film composer who established what is now thought of as Hollywood style. A further phase after the Second World War, when he attempted in vain to re-establish himself in the 'serious' musical world, failed not so much because of any stigma from writing film music (from which many musicians have suffered) as because, in the post-war world, he seemed outdated. And indeed, as is shown by this collection of all his independent orchestral works except for the Violin Concerto, his music, impervious to all modern trends, always remained essentially unchanged in style from the lush, alt-Wien romanticism with which he had first astonished the world. This is underlined by the interpenetration of his concert and film scores: on the one hand, Robin Hood (for which he received an Oscar) was a reworking of the Sursum corda overture, and on the other the Violin Concerto drew on material from four films, the Symphony on Anthony Adverse (another Oscar-winner), while the Cello Concerto started life in the Bette Davis film Deception.
Though the ballet The Snowman, composed at the age of 11, was acclaimed at the Vienna Court Opera in the presence of the Emperor, Korngold's first work of real individuality, and scored by himself (his teacher Zemlinsky had previously aided him), was the Schauspiel Ouverture (''Overture to a drama''). Its opening is striking, and the sophistication of the harmony and the virtuosity of the orchestration are well-nigh incredible for a 14-year-old; but it reveals an over-expansiveness that was to become a fatal tendency of his. The largescale Sinfonietta, written only a year later, shows him already fully mature and enormously accomplished: both the present performances of it are full-blooded, spirited and enjoyable. Gerd Albrecht takes the waltz theme in the cheerful first movement a little slower than his rival, and gains by a brighter recording quality (noticeably cleaner-cut in the scherzo, though the brass are a bit over-enthusiastic), by his tonal sensitivity in the slow movement, and by the far greater bite of his finale; but unfortunately the disc's overall duration of only 43 minutes is a factor that cannot be ignored. The invention-packed finale of the Sinfonietta contains much that can indeed be justly described as genius, regardless of its composer's age.
The recordings of the four-disc collection were made over a period of five years, and so vary in quality. Of the Suite drawn from the incidental music to a production of Much ado about nothing in the Burgtheater in 1918, the Overture sounds as if it is played in a swimming-bath, but the other movements fare better. Noteworthy are the composer's fondness for the harmonium (which has an episode in the Overture largely to itself), his apparently inexhaustible melodic gift, at its simplest in the ''Intermezzo'' and its most romantic in the ''Girl's apartment'', and the lusty final ''Hornpipe'' with its exuberant horn parts. The Sursum corda overture tries to out-Strauss Strauss in the size of its orchestra, the opulence of its texture and its rapturous mood (there is even an occasional hint of Don Juan): its chief faults are its episodic construction and its final rodomontade. An overt striving for grandiosity also mars the single-movement—and over-long—Concerto written in 1923 for the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein: it is at its best in the lyrical second subject. The South African pianist Steven de Groote, who was killed in an air crash a year after making this recording, plays it manfully.
The disc I would most recommend to anyone making a first acquaintance with Korngold's music is the third. Apart from the lighter-veined (but still sonorously scored) Baby Serenade composed on the birth of his second son in 1928, which includes saxophones in the orchestra, uses jazzy rhythms, but is most notable for its charming lullaby of Viennese provenance, the disc is given over to immediately post-war works. The short, one-movement Cello Concerto—somewhat Waltonian in idiom—is one of his finest and most satisfying compositions, with a quality of invention, a technical assurance and a compactness which by rights should ensure its adoption into the general concert repertoire. It is expressively played by Julius Berger. The Symphonic Serenade for strings (whose virtuoso writing the players bring off with only a very occasional sign of stress) starts with one of Korngold's most charming themes: a delightful pizzicato scherzo precedes the work's emotional climax, an elegiac movement of long sweeping lines, and a vigorous, contrapuntally ingenious finale. Excellent recording here.
Korngold's final phase is illustrated by the fourth disc, which contains the immensely engaging Theme and Variations (which would be a cinch for a Saturday night Prom) and some sparklingly arranged Johann Strauss melodies, both works intended for American school orchestras—of whose capabilities he must have had an extremely high opinion—as well as his last major work, the Symphony in F sharp, which had to wait until 15 years after his death for performance. Warmly romantic (yet not shrinking from some asperities), full of original ideas, crafted with mastery, with a particularly impressive scherzo, it exhibits his remarkable fluency, which however descends into the facile in the finale. But the overall impression left by this devoted four-disc survey is of an exceptionally gifted composer whom the musical world has been too ready to snub or to ignore. Full marks throughout the set for sensible and informative notes, well translated.'