Erich! (3 movements) Stephen Melillo

A Tribute to Korngold

Description

Potent, Straussian, Korngoldian orchestration,.. constantly changing colours and rhythmic drive take us through this swashbuckling tribute to Composer, ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD!

The highly energized music is derived from the first 5 notes of the major scale. In addition to its programmatic power, ERICH is a wonderful teaching tool. The 2nd Movement, THE GIFT OF LOVE, is a romantic ballad, warm and giving.

There is also a Brass Quartet Version, and a Low Brass Choir Version.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold, born in Brynn, Austria (now Brno, Czechoslovakia), on May 29, 1897, has been called the last of the great Romantic composers. The son of eminent Austrian music critic Julius Korngold, he was a child prodigy who stunned the Viennese music world with his precocity as a composer.

At the age of ten, he played his "Gold" cantata for Gustav Mahler, who proclaimed him a genius and sent him to one of Austria's foremost teachers for advanced training. In 1910 the premiere of his ballet "Der Schneemann" -- which he had composed two years earlier -- created a sensation at the Vienna Court Opera.

The teenaged Korngold followed this with a Piano Trio and a Piano Sonata in E that Artur Schnabel championed. Other admirers included Puccini, who praised Korngold's 1916 opera VIOLANTA, and Richard Strauss, who described his reactions to Korngold's adolescent compositions as follows: "awe and fear: this firmness of style, this sovereignty of form, this individual expression, this harmonic structure -- it is really amazing."

Korngold composed the work for which he is now best known, the opera DIE TOTE STADT, when he was 20; its dual premiere in Hamburg and Cologne in 1920 secured his reputation throughout Europe. In 1928 a poll conducted by a Vienna newspaper ranked Korngold with Schoenberg as the two greatest living composers. Korngold's friend and collaborator, stage and film director Max Reinhardt, brought him to Hollywood in 1934.

He was ready to return home for the Vienna premiere of his fifth opera, DIE KATHRIN, when Hitler's troops marched into Austria and were greeted by cheering crowds. He remained in the United States, bringing members of his family out of Austria ahead of the wave of Nazi terror. For the next two decades Korngold composed music for films and the concert hall, including a Violin Concerto, introduced by Jascha Heifetz, and a Symphonic Serenade for strings, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwingler. Two of his film scores, for ANTHONY ADVERSE (1936) and THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938), won Academy Awards. He passed on in Hollywood on November 29, 1957.

STORMNote: it was in the film ANTHONY ADVERSE, that Stephen Melillo first heard, as a young boy, the STORMChord! "Erich Korngold, far and beyond his history or critical acclaim is a man who I have come to Love and admire... because of his Music! In his outpouring I can hear the valiant stance against the un-Romantic. I hear him take on the mantle of honesty and sincerity and giving. He offered to us, the 'Gift of Love'. This piece, ERICH!... is a small and humble gift back to him. I hope that you and the kids will truly enjoy this "pointer" back to Erich Korngold, the man... and his much needed Music. Godspeed!"