Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Music for Violin and Piano (Joseph Lin; Benjamin Loeb)

Information

Composer: Erich Wolfgang Korngold

• 'Much Ado About Nothing', Suite for Violin and Piano, Op. 11
• Sonata for Violin and Piano in G major, Op. 6
• Ich ging zu him, from 'Das Wander der Heliane'
• Serenade, from 'Der Schneemann'
• Tanzlied des Pierrot, from 'Die tote Stadt', Op. 12
• Caprice Fantastique (Wichtelmännchen from 'Märchenbilder', Op. 3, arr. by Rózsika Révay)
• Mariettas Lied, from 'Die tote Stadt', Op. 12

Joseph Lin, violin

Benjamin Loeb, piano

Date: 2004

Label: Naxos

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Review

Korngold’s lush, romantic, youthful music is the ideal vehicle to show off the considerable virtuoso and expressive talents of Joseph Lin featured as the Laureate violinist in this new ‘Naxos Laureate Series’ release. The young Lin has already successfully toured across the globe and picked up an impressive list of prizes including the top place in the 2001 Michael Hill World Violin Competition.

The main work in this programme is Korngold’s Sonata for Violin and Piano. Spanning some 36 minutes, it is an immense achievement for a youth in his mid-teens, the melodic writing so complex and sophisticated that it sounds much bigger, almost as though one is listening to an orchestral composition. As Richard Whitehouse says in his notes, Korngold, like Richard Strauss, clearly identified the violin with the human voice, its material lyrical, stirring and evocative; and the piano writing is no less effective, passionate, poetic and expressive. Interestingly, in this context, pianist Benjamin Loeb, making an ideal partner for Lin, is also an accomplished orchestral conductor. The opening movement, marked, Ben moderato, ma con passione, appeals directly to the senses, romantic, passionate, it yearns and pleads and is occasionally defiant, disturbing and shadowy. The second movement combines a cavorting scherzo, that bounces and cavorts with swashbuckling swagger, with a Trio that has a waltz tune, marked ‘with deepest feeling’, which comes from the Vier kleinen fröhlichen Walzern for piano. The following Adagio’s passion is no less deeply felt, while the concluding Allegretto is an engaging sequence of variations on a Korngold song, Schneeglöckchen (Snowdrops).

Korngold’s charming, outgoing Much Ado About Nothing music transfers very well to violin and piano. In the opening ‘Maiden in the Bridal Chamber’ Lin and Loeb wittily suggest the bride’s sentimental expectancy and coy modesty. The comic, grizzled and argumentative pomposity of ‘Dogberry and Verges’ is equally well observed while all the sylvan romanticism of the ‘Garden Scene’ is nicely evoked. The short suite is rounded off with a vivacious ‘Masquerade’.

The shorter pieces all shine. Those favourite melodies from Die Tote Stadt, Pierrot’s and Marrietta’s Lieds sound fresh and gorgeously expressive – just listen, for example to the piano part as it so evocatively sets the scene along the Bruges canals for the Pierrot Lied. How Lin can touch the heart! A darker hued beauty is the tragic, melancholic, resigned music from Das Wunder der Heliane The ‘Serenade’ from Der Schneemann is all sweet sentimentality – an amazing feat from boy genius, Korngold, barely into his teens. Finally another fine virtuosic and wonderfully expressive rendering of the Caprice Fantastique; this is Korngold’s arrangement of his own Wichtelmännchen (The Goblins) from his 1910 set of Fairy Tale Pictures. The mischievous, ill-tempered, character of the goblins and their awkward gait is quite brilliantly evoked in a marvellously witty and sardonic performance.

Excellent virtuosic and expressive performances of some of Korngold’s most enchanting music.

— Ian Lace

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Erich Wolfgang Korngold (May 29, 1897 – November 29, 1957) was an Austrian-born composer and child prodigy, hailed as a genius in early 20th-century classical music. He gained early fame for his operas, particularly Die tote Stadt (1920), before fleeing Nazi-occupied Austria in the 1930s. In Hollywood, Korngold became a pioneer of film music, composing lush, romantic scores for films like The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), which won him an Academy Award. He wrote scores for 16 Hollywood films in all, and is considered one of the founders of film music, along with Max Steiner and Alfred Newman.

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Joseph Lin (born 1978) is a Taiwanese-American violinist. A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University, he later studied the guqin in China as a Fulbright scholar. Lin has won major international honors, including top prizes at the Concert Artists Guild and Michael Hill competitions, and was a founding member of the Formosa Quartet, winner of the 2006 London String Quartet Competition. A former first violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet, he performs widely across the U.S., Asia and Europe. Lin has an extensive discography and is active in both modern and period-instrument performance.

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Benjamin Loeb (born 1966) is a Grammy-nominated conductor, pianist, educator, and arts administrator with degrees from Harvard University, Curtis Institute of Music, Juilliard School, and the Peabody Institute. He has performed with major artists and orchestras worldwide, including the Boston Pops Orchestra. In 2024–25, he conducted the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and led international engagements in Ukraine and the Czech Republic. Founder of the International Conducting Workshop and Festival, Loeb is also active as an arts leader and educator, with extensive experience in symphonic, operatic, and collaborative performance.

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