Erich Wolfgang Korngold was 50 years old at the time of the 1947 debut of his Violin Concerto in D Major, a lyrical work begun a decade earlier. The half-century mark can seem significant to any artist, but for Korngold it held special meaning: “Fifty is old,” he said, “for a child prodigy.”
Korngold, born in Austria in 1897, was playing piano at age 6, writing keyboard pieces at 8, and composing a ballet at 11. Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss were among young Korngold’s mentors. At 20, he wrote his first opera. Within three years, he was one of the most popular opera composers in Europe.
This child prodigy flourished in early 20th-century Vienna, where culture was king. As an artist and a personality, Korngold was most at home in the musical theater, where he became a colleague of director Max Reinhardt. It was Reinhardt who coaxed Korngold to Los Angeles in 1934 to adapt the music of Mendelssohn for the Warner Bros. movie version of Reinhardt’s Hollywood Bowl production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
The violin concerto by Korngold was dedicated to Alma Mahler, the widow of Korngold’s childhood mentor Gustav Mahler. It was premiered on 15 February 1947 by Jascha Heifetz and the St. Louis Symphony under conductor Vladimir Golschmann.
Here is violinist Leonidas Kavakos, to share this music with you:
