Richard Bratby

From bad joke to 21st-century classic: the best recordings of Korngold’s Violin Concerto

The newfound popularity of this lovely and loveable work proves concert repertoire — supposedly so inflexible — can and does evolve

The 1947 première of Erich Korngold's Violin Concerto was panned by critics and the composer died, broken, in 1957. Photo: Historia / Shutterstock 
issue 13 February 2021

Erich Korngold was what you might call an early adopter. As a child prodigy in Habsburg Vienna, he’d astonished the world: a schoolboy composing orchestral scores that made Elektra sound tame. Jump ahead three decades, and Korngold, in his fashion, was still ahead of the curve. He was one of the first residents of Toluca Lake, North Hollywood, to buy a television.

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