Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Korngold's Violin Concerto begins with the soloist already singing. There is no need to establish virtuosity through an aggressive entrance: the breadth of the line immediately claims attention. Its richly coloured surroundings make the violin seem both intimately human and capable of extraordinary expansion. The work asks its soloist to combine a singer's continuity with the technical freedom to move through an exceptionally demanding instrumental part.

Written in 1945 and premiered by Jascha Heifetz with the St Louis Symphony under Vladimir Golschmann in February 1947, the concerto belongs to Korngold's return to sustained concert composition after years of film work. It draws on themes from his Hollywood scores, but those themes are not merely assembled as a souvenir. Korngold develops and expands them for the solo violin, adapting their proportions to the concerto’s three movements.

The first movement's opening melody came from Another Dawn, while further material is associated with Juarez. Recognising the films is not a condition of understanding the music. More revealing is the way the violin's line expands and changes register, and how the orchestra can support it while retaining a vivid life of its own. A melody that seems effortless may require finely controlled timing to negotiate its harmonic turns.

The central Romance draws on Anthony Adverse. Here the soloist's sound must remain concentrated even when the surrounding orchestration is delicate and luminous. The movement's appeal is not simply that it is beautiful. Its phrases create expectation through the postponement of resolution, and the violin's ability to sustain a line across those delays becomes a form of dramatic action.

The finale, using material from The Prince and the Pauper, brings a more athletic character. Repetition and variation allow the soloist to display agility without abandoning melodic identity. The relationship between articulation and momentum is especially exposed: brilliant passagework needs a clear rhythmic profile if the music is to dance rather than merely rush.

The concerto's film connections have sometimes been used to place it outside the supposed seriousness of concert music. That division is historically misleading and musically unhelpful. Korngold brought an established Viennese theatrical imagination to Hollywood, and he later transformed film material through the demands of a concert genre. Listening closely to those transformations is more illuminating than deciding in advance which side of an artificial border the music belongs on.

Kristīne Balanas performed the concerto with Nova and William Garfield Walker at the UNICEF benefit concert in the Musikverein's Golden Hall on 12 June 2025. Elgar's Nimrod and Brahms's First Symphony framed it with other forms of lyrical and symphonic expression.

Four films within a concert work

Korngold drew material from Another Dawn and Juarez for the first movement, Anthony Adverse for the Romance, and The Prince and the Pauper for the finale. These are starting points for recomposition, not instructions to imagine the original scenes throughout. The concerto changes the themes’ scale and relationships, giving the violin opportunities for elaboration that a film sequence would not necessarily permit. Knowing the sources reveals continuity within Korngold’s career without reducing the concerto to borrowed atmosphere.

A singer and an acrobat

The dedication to Alma Mahler connects the score with Korngold’s Viennese musical world, while Jascha Heifetz’s 1947 premiere helped establish its concert identity. The solo part requires sustained lyrical command as well as formidable agility. Listen to the contrast between the opening’s broad intervals and the finale’s springing articulation. Both depend on a sense of melodic direction. The technical demands become dramatically convincing when the violin seems to change its manner of speaking, rather than simply moving from slow notes to fast ones.