Sounds from the Heart

Erich Korngold: Violin Concerto

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957) composed a ballet when he was 11, two operas as a teenager, and was still only 23 when he wrote his highly-successful Die tote Stadt. In 1934, he fled to America to escape the Nazis. He was immediately snapped up by Hollywood, and won two Oscars for film scores. His style did not, however, appeal to some, who accused him of pandering to popular taste, and as if to prove his artistic worth, he composed a Violin Concerto in 1945. In doing so, he achieved the impossible: bowing simultaneously to the film and classical music traditions and remaining firmly entrenched in the virtuoso tradition of the Late Romantics. Jascha Heifetz, the soloist at the premiere in 1947, adopted the concerto as his great showpiece for years to come.

Though rooted in the Classical tradition, the concerto is by nature cinematographic and draws on some of Korngold’s own Hollywood themes. The main theme of the opening movement is from the film Another Dawn, and the second theme is from Juarez. Almost all the second movement consists of variations on a theme from Anthony Adverse, and the finale folk dances take up the beat of The Prince and the Pauper.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36

Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) wrote his fourth symphony in 1877. Always self-critical, he wondered whether anyone would ever listen to it once he had left this world. He need not have been pessimistic, for it is still one of his most popular works. Describing it in a letter to its dedicatee Nadezhda von Meck, he explained that the opening fanfare is Fate: “that fateful force which prevents the impulse to happiness from attaining its goal.” The second movement captures “that melancholy feeling that comes in the evenings when, weary from your labour, you sit alone, and take a book”; the third “the elusive images that can rush past in the imagination when you have drunk a little wine”; and the finale “a picture of festive merriment”.

The fate to which Tchaikovsky refers may have been his homosexuality. Some of the motifs, on the other hand, point to the aria in Bizet’s Carmen when she sees her death forecast in the cards. Be that as it may, the symphony also expresses the ultra-romantic idea (which Tchaikovsky admitted having borrowed from Beethoven’s fifth symphony) of victory over adversity.