Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Symphony; Much Ado About Nothing (Marc Albrecht)

Information

Composer: Erich Wolfgang Korngold

• Symphony in F-sharp major, Op. 40
• Much Ado About Nothing, incidental music, Op. 11

Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg

Marc Albrecht, conductor

Date: 2010

Label: PentaTone

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Review

This is, hands down, the best-engineered performance of Korngold’s masterful symphony yet released, and that means a lot. Looking at the score, what strikes the eye immediately is not how lavishly Korngold deploys his resources, but rather how efficiently and economically. The secret of that special orchestral (and now thought of as “Hollywood”) sheen results from remarkable chord spacing between strings and winds, and above all from rhythmic displacement–from having the parts slightly out of synchronization with each other. The result creates fluidity without density, and by placing, say, a harp glissando where you least expect it, Korngold gives the impression of richness when in fact the size of the ensemble is not at all extravagant. All of this is particularly easy to hear in this wonderfully clear and present recording.

Happily, the performances also stand among the finest available, and that means Kempe/Munich (Varèse Sarabande) and Welser-Möst/Philadelphia (EMI). Marc Albrecht has the strings playing with virtuoso abandon, in the first two movements especially, both of which present some truly difficult challenges in terms of ensemble coordination. More importantly, Albrecht has a real feel for the structure of the music. The first movement and finale seldom have sounded so cogently paced, as well as expressively powerful.

The truth is, if you compare all of the work’s extant recordings, the timings among them are not significantly different. What matters is the internal relationship between formal sections, and it is here that Albrecht really excels. This, plus the clarity of his bass lines and incisive feeling for rhythm, gives the music an urgency and vitality that are the very opposite of the tired, late-Romantic decadence that Korngold stereotypically represents. The result is tremendously beautiful, moving (try that perfectly flowing Adagio!), and satisfying. The suite from Much Ado About Nothing makes an ideally apt and absolutely delightful encore, but it’s the performance of the symphony that makes this disc special. Listen, and dare yourself to admit that it’s not one of the truly great 20th-century works in the medium.

— David Hurwitz

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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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Marc Albrecht (born 1964 in Hanover) is a German conductor. Trained by his father and mentored by Claudio Abbado, he began his career as an assistant with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester and at the Hamburg State Opera. He served as music director of the Staatstheater Darmstadt and later led the Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg. From 2011 to 2020, he was chief conductor of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, and Dutch National Opera. Appointed chief conductor-designate of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra in 2025/26, he assumes the full post in 2026/27.

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