NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra - Korngold: Orchestral Works (2022)

Erich Wolfgang Korngold began composing his String Sextet during his vacation in Alt-Aussee in the summer of 1914 and while working on Violanta, his second opera. At the time he was seventeen years old, had already established himself internationally as a composer with an impressive work catalogue, and was regarded as the greatest child prodigy of his time. In the Sextet, heard here in an arrangement for string orchestra by the conductor Hartmut Rohde, Korngold employs the most opulent, most richly colorful style in order to produce a highly romantic work consisting of four complex movements.

Thirty years later Korngold was living in exile in Hollywood. Following a heart attack he was in the hospital and began composing a work for string orchestra in his head while recuperating. The result was his Symphonic Serenade in B-flat major, Op. 39, one of the best works he composed during the final years of his life.