ASV’s latest addition to its Korngold series is an indispensable disc gathering together the complete works for violin and piano, including no fewer than three world- premiere recordings. In addition, the whole venture is made all the more indispensable for the superb performances throughout by Detlef Hahn and Andrew Ball.
The disc opens with the remarkably early, but technically and emotionally mature, Violin Sonata in D – a ravishing work that certainly ranks among Korngold’s major compositions. It was composed in 1912 at the suggestion of Carl Flesch and Artur Schnabel, and was first performed by them in 1913. The Sonata is lyrical and expansive and has all the characteristics of Korngold’s melodic and harmonic idiom – there’s certainly nothing apprentice about this piece. Hahn and Ball give a beautifully crafted performance indeed and have truly absorbed the essence of this masterly score.
Korngold’s suite of incidental music for Much Ado About Nothing has enjoyed a certain amount of currency in its original orchestral version, but less so in Korngold’s own arrangement for violin and piano heard here. The transition works marvellously, being ideally suited to the intimacy of chamber music. The second movement, ‘Dogberry and Verges’, a grotesque march depicting the two drunken night-watchmen, pays passing homage to Korngold’s childhood idol Gustav Mahler, and elsewhere in the suite (still essentially an early work, written in 1919) there are constant intimations of the film scores of later years.
The remainder of the disc is devoted to smaller arrangements of works, including two extracts from the opera Die tote Stadt and one from Das Wunder der Heliane as well as the gorgeous song setting Sonett fur Wien (In Memoriam), Op 41, the theme of which Korngold also used in the 1946 film Escape Me Never. Hahn and Ball are once again most persuasive; only in the ‘Serenade’ from Der Schneemann did I feel that a certain amount of charm was lost through their slightly impulsive choice of tempo. Excellent sound recording – another highly recommendable issue in ASV’s Korngold series.'