Korngold: Tanzlied des Pierrot from Die tote Stadt, Op. 12

Best-selling Scottish virtuoso Nicola Benedetti moves dramatically from the 18th-century world of Italia to the 20th-century world of cinema.

As a long-time champion of the lush Violin Concerto by the great stage and screen composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Nicola Benedetti has chosen to build a programme around his late Romantic concerto masterpiece.

This unique collection of violin classics, written specifically for the movies, includes the poignant lament from Schindler’s List.

Dmitri Shostakovich, recognised as the Soviet Union’s greatest film composer, is represented by the beloved Gadfly Romance, as well as the similarly lyrical Andante from the film The Counterplan

The contemporary British cinema is represented by the haunting main theme and specially-composed Fantasy for Violin & Orchestra from the 2004 hit Ladies in Lavender

In Werke für Violine und Klavier, the interplay between grotesque humour and instant melodic upswings the piece demonstrates the amazing plasticity of the young Korngold’s inventiveness. Korngold draws on the classical forms in Streichsextett D-Dur, but realizes them individually; the tonal harmonies are sometimes stretched to their limits, without touching their significant function; though the six voices are conceived polyphonically, they can resound orchestrally – all this is part of the trade of the ingenious adolescent.

Korngold’s ballet ‘The Snowman’ (Der Schneemann) was one of his early major achievements written at the age of eleven. Shortly afterwards he composed Wichtelmännchen’ and the ‘Caprice fantastique’ from the ‘Fairy Tale Pictures’ Op. 3 for piano. Two hits from the successful opera ‘Die Tote Stadt’ follow: ‘Glück, das mir verblieb’ andthe ‘Tanzlied des Pierrot’ are essentially waltzes, highly eloquent in the versions for violin. The Sextet stems from 1914/15, just after the completion of ‘Violanta’; the première being given in 1917 by an ensemble directed by Arnold Rosé, the famous concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic. Korngold draws on classical forms, but touches with the gifts of an ingenious adolescent, evoking comparison with passages of the Schoenberg sextet ‘Verklärte Nacht’ of 1899.