For decades, Erich Korngold’s influential film music eclipsed his concert and operatic works. In recent years that has changed
considered “Kings Row” his best work as an actor. Beyond its presidential cast, the small-town melodrama has another claim to fame. Moviegoers may find its lavish soundtrack familiar, particularly a brassy fanfare motif. George Lucas included this music on a temporary soundtrack when planning an ambitious space epic in 1976. John Williams, his composer, took the hint, and so the “Star Wars” theme was born.
The Austrian émigré musician, born in 1897, had arrived at the Warner Brothers studio not as a jobbing hack, but a prolific and esteemed composer. His youthful works, such as a ballet completed at the age of 11, earned praise from Gustav Mahler, Giacomo Puccini and Richard Strauss. Invited to Hollywood in 1934 by Max Reinhardt, a director, to write the score for a big-budget adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, Korngold quickly became the studio’s star in-house composer.
For decades, Korngold’s influential film music eclipsed his concert and operatic works. In recent years that has changed. His sumptuous, tuneful and lushly orchestrated style no longer encounters snobbish scorn from taste-makers for whom the abrasive atonality of Arnold Schoenberg defined the classical sound of the 20th century. No more do critics sneer at his fabulously melodic “Violin Concerto” of 1947 . His music intrigues and excites players, singers, conductors and academic specialists.