The Korngold Symphony

Erich Wolfgang Korngold, ousted from his Austrian homeland by Nazi persecution, made a seamless transition from wunderkind creator of concert works and operas to become a legendary Hollywood composer. Decades after his death in Los Angeles in 1957, Korngold’s grandson discovered two private recordings of him playing his postwar Symphony in F-sharp at the piano like a man possessed, and shared them with conductor John Mauceri. The composer’s incendiary performance, reproduced here in its original warts-and-all sound as an essential reference source, informed Mauceri’s equally intense one-take studio recording of the Symphony with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana. The orchestral interpretation, while more nuanced than Korngold’s demonic keyboard version, projects the conductor’s convincing reading of the score as a visceral reaction to the horrors of the Second World War.