Korngold: String Quartets Nos. 1-3

Album review

This is not the first recording of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's three string quartets, but they are hardly common items. This is perhaps because Korngold spent so much of his career as a film composer. The quartets are especially interesting in that two of them, at least, seem to anticipate phases of his career that were coming next. The String Quartet No. 2 in E flat major, Op. 26, is a more melodic and more positive work compared with its predecessor, surprising, given its origin in the grim year of 1933, but it seems to point to Korngold's incipient turn toward film music. Likewise, the String Quartet No. 3 in D major, Op. 34, composed in 1945 in the U.S., suggested Korngold's return to concert music after the war. It is an intriguing work, tonally but not motivically conservative, and really unlike anything else of the period. The String Quartet No. 1, Op. 16, is given the A major key designation, but it definitely was written under the influence of Schoenberg and flirts with atonality. The Tippett Quartet deserves credit for shifting gears effectively, cultivating quite a hard edge in the String Quartet No. 1 but producing real lyricism in the underrated slow third movement of the second quartet. With excellent sound from the School Farm Studios in Essex, U.K., this is a release that will find a place in many collections of 20th century chamber music; it appeared on classical best-seller charts in early 2023.
© James Manheim /TiVo