Die Stumme Serenade by Korngold / Erich Wolfgang Korngold (CD, 2014)

The most bizarre Korngold recording you'll ever hear.

I happened to stumble across this CD while browsing through "Korngold" listings. Even as a giant fan of Korngold's music I had never heard of this work before. Then I saw that the recording was conducted by Korngold! I had to look into it more.

This is one of the strangest things I've ever heard. I think anyone who is familiar with Korngold's film scores or operas might agree when they hear it.

Apparently, this work was completed in 1946. It was written for a chamber orchestra of about 12 players. Deanna Durbin wanted to do it as a film. That never happened. It eventually premiered on radio in Vienna in 1951 with Korngold playing (and conducting from) one of the two pianos in the chamber group. This Archipel 2-CD set contains that complete 1951 Vienna radio premiere, including all the dialogue (in German, with no English translation notes). It is a very strange animal. Imagine an early Nelson Eddy/Jeannette MacDonald operetta film crossed with early-1930s Kurt Weill cabaret music. Then, out of nowhere, you get a couple of songs that sound like they came out of Korngold's DIE TOTE STADT. I mean, it would have been kind of odd even in the the 1930s or so, but in 1946 or 1951, this surely would have been totally behind the times. I do not mean to imply that this an inferior Korngold composition, but simply that it sort of defies description within the rest of the known musical output of this composer. It is indeed rife with the kind of melodies we would instantly recognize as Korngold, but which are presented in settings that are often quite unexpected.

The sound quality is not optimal by today's standards, but is truly admirable for a 1951 mono recording.Read full review

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