Korngold The Snowman

Korngold The Snowman Program Notes

Child  prodigy  Erich  Wolfgang  Korngold  came  from  a  Viennese  musical  family,  and  Mahler,  Strauss  and  others  recognized  his  talent  at  a  young  age.    His  ballet-pantomime  The  Snowman  was  premiered  at  the  Vienna  Court  Opera,  with  orchestration  by  his  teacher  Anton  von  Zemlinsky,  when  he  was  11!  In  the  late  1930s,  a  visit  to  Los  Angeles  to  compose  the  film  score  for  The  Adventures  of  Robin  Hood  starring  Errol  Flynn,  became  a  one-way  trip,  following  the  Anschluss  (Austrian  integration into  Nazi  Germany).    Composer  of  many  other  swashbuckling film  scores,  his  works  also  include  a  fair  number  of  chamber  pieces,  opera,  and  the  violin  concerto,  which  is  part  of  the  adventurous-but-not-obscure repertoire.

Born: May 29, 1897, Brno, Czechia
Died: November 29, 1957, Toluca Lake, Los Angeles, CA