OPEN REHEARSAL: KORNGOLD Piano Quintet in E Major
Go behind the scenes and observe CMNW’s world-class musicians working together to put the finishing touches on the music for upcoming performances. An informal Q&A follows the rehearsal.
Before his Hollywood fame, a young Erich Korngold was hailed in Vienna as the “Mozart of the 20th century”. He wrote his thrillingly virtuosic and joyful piano quintet when he was just 24!
Reed College, Kaul Auditorium
Wednesday, 7/6 • 11:00 am PT
Program
Click on any piece of music below to learn more about it.
- ERICH KORNGOLD Piano Quintet in E Major, Op. 15 (1921)
I. Mässiges Zeitmass, mit schwungvoll
blühendem Ausdruck
II. Adagio: Mit grösster Ruhe, stets äusserst
gebunden und aus drucksvoll
III. Finale: Gemessen beinahe pathetischErich Korngold was a man out of time. Had he been born a century earlier, his romantic sensibilities would have aligned perfectly with the musical and artistic aesthetics of the 19th century. Instead, Korngold grew up in the tumult of the early 20th century, when his tonal, lyrical style had been eclipsed by the horrors of WWI and the stark modernist trends promulgated by his fellow Viennese composers Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern.
Korngold’s prodigious compositional talent emerged early. At age ten, he performed his cantata Gold for Gustav Mahler, whereupon the older composer called him “a genius.” When Korngold was 13, just after his bar mitzvah, the Austrian Imperial Ballet staged his pantomime The Snowman. In his teens, Korngold received commissions from the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; pianist Artur Schnabel performed Korngold’s Op. 2 Piano Sonata on tour, and Korngold also began writing operas, completing two full-scale works by age 18. At 23, Korngold’s opera Die tote Stadt (The Dead City) brought him international renown; it was performed in 83 different opera houses.
After Die tote Stadt, Korngold turned his attention to chamber music, and began working on his Piano Quintet in E Major, Op. 15 (1921). The first movement, marked “with a lively blooming expression,” unleashes Korngold at his most Romantic. Ravishingly opulent harmonies and dense textures, in the manner of Richard Strauss, fill the soundscape. The overall experience of listening to this music is the aural equivalent of walking through a hothouse full of exotic rare orchids; the steamy atmosphere of the greenhouse enhances the stunning beauty of the blooms. The Adagio, by contrast, has an inward, pared-down quality. It opens with viola and cello in slow steady octaves, anchored by deep chords in the piano. Even as the tempo changes from Adagio to faster interludes, Korngold maintains the crystalline texture by means of pizzicatos, harmonics, and continued octaves for various string pairs. Korngold ranges far and wide harmonically, but always returns to the steady stasis of the opening theme. What makes this movement so unusual is the combination of deeply expressive phrases and the calm serenity of its opening. The Finale is a study in the unexpected: it opens with a powerful violin cadenza, but soon gives way to a series of episodes that keep the listener playfully off-balance.
—© Elizabeth Schwartz