On your upcoming album “Korngold: Portrait of a piano” you have combined some of the most famous film music by the Austrian composer Erich Korngold with his opera “Das Wunder der Heliane”, and his second piano sonata which he wrote when he was only 13 years old! We would love to delve deeper in your experience and your connection with these works.
What fascinates you in symphonic film music in general, and the ways in which Korngold’s music in particular enhances the cinematic experience?
Firstly, I’m pretty sure that I heard the sound of a symphony orchestra coming from my TV at home and the movie theater before discovering classical music at all. More specifically, I remember watching the first three “Harry Potter” movies with my friends over and over again which feature these extravagant John Williams scores. At the same time as a 9-year-old, I’m getting recordings of music by Mahler, Strauss, Prokofiev and the sound of it is completely natural to me. I wonder why…? My piano teacher at the time never introduced me to symphonic music, that’s for sure.
Anyway, in my mind I made no particular distinction between the music. I could enjoy Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” as much as “The Empire Strikes Back” – to my ears it was just symphonic music carrying along a story. Enter Korngold! When I discovered his music some years ago (and that of other Hollywood’s Golden Age composers, mostly Jewish refugees from Europe) it was a eureka moment for me as I was finally able to connect some dots. To explain it as simply as I can: he brought his experience of writing Wagnerian operas, with its sense of drama and use of leitmotifs for characters and so on, to the world of cinema.
While I enjoy a good tune like probably most people do, that’s really not my main attraction to film music (I like the term ‘music for film’ way more, by the way). I think the real magic happens when a composer manages to write a score that gives a dramatic arc to a scene, or multiple scenes after each other, and that *despite* the extreme precise timings he has to deal with, it simply comes out sounding as a great piece of music. I’m thinking of the finale from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, or the first love scene from “The Sea Hawk” that I transcribed and recorded for this album – it’s about 7 minutes of music matching exactly what is happening on the screen yet it’s as dramatic as any good opera scene.
The problem I have though is that most of this music rarely gets played or heard and is mostly being buried between dialogue and sound effects. It might not even be on the original soundtrack album! I think that when you look at film music being played in concerts, there’s mostly just short presentations of the most famous tunes and that’s it. It’s like presenting a few snippets of famous leitmotifs from Wagner’s operas and calling it a day. More on this later!
Your dedication to the album began quite some time ago, and you’ve even contacted Korngold’s family! Can you walk us through the journey of this project and how your interactions with his family influenced or inspired your approach to the music?
I knew that when doing a Korngold album I didn’t just want to feature his piano works, most of which were written when he was a child prodigy. I would rather present something that shows a bigger picture of his composing career. I’ve been making transcriptions for a while now and Korngold himself played all of his music at the piano, so it made a lot of sense to me to actually feature arrangements on the album. The only problem was that I needed permission to record these and that took me on quite a journey. Conductor John Mauceri, who recorded many premiere recordings of Korngold’s works, helped me to get in touch with the composer’s grandchildren Kathrin and Leslie and they were extremely generous in helping me not just to get the permission from the publishers but also to obtain the sheet music scores of “The Sea Hawk”, that remain mostly unpublished to this day.
Originally I had made a shorter suite, using snippets of what was published (not much) and filling in some gaps with transcribing the music by ear. That was very time-consuming and ultimately not very satisfying, because I was never completely sure if I ‘got it right’. Getting access to the full scores meant that I could actually feature all the music that I wanted, and I was able to re-work my previous work in great detail.
Right now, Schott music is also planning to publish the sheet music of my transcription of ‘Ich ging zu ihm’, and this is all due to the trust of the Korngold family. It makes me feel very honored and grateful.
How was the experience of having the handwritten orchestrations of “The Sea Hawk” in your hands?
The orchestrations are located at the library of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, which really isn’t around the corner for me. But just around the time I was in touch with USC, I joined a concert tour with Camerata RCO in the US on short notice and our first concert was in Los Angeles. What a coincidence! So I spent about a day at the campus and browsing through all the scores, some 650 (!) pages of them, making notes of what I needed to have so USC could scan the right pages for me. I have to note that these were the handwritings of his orchestrators, but Korngold did conduct from these pages and they had his own red and blue markings from the recording sessions. Amazing to look at history like that.
Also I went through a violin part and one of them had a drawn pirate ship in it – maybe the violinist was a bit bored during rehearsal or lunch break? I have no idea. It was all a bit surreal to look at that and I wish I had taken a picture of it.
This is a very personal album for you, as it mainly includes your own transcriptions of the aria “Ich ging zu ihm” and the soundtracks from the movies “The Adventures of Robin Hood” and “The Sea Hawk”. What inspired you to transcribe these specific works?
“Ich ging zu ihm” was probably the piece that ’sold’ me on Korngold. When I heard it I was just overwhelmed by the beauty of the harmonies, the lushness of the orchestration… well, it’s hard to put into words. Korngold also thought that the opera it is from, ‘Das Wunder der Heliane’, was truly his masterpiece so I chose to open the album with it. I also try to play it wherever I can and if it encourages anyone to check out the original aria I’ll be very happy. I was obviously also quite inspired by the fact that Liszt wrote his well-known transcription of Wagner’s “Isolde’s Liebestod”, to which this music is certainly stylistically related.
The big suite with music from “The Sea Hawk” came from two places: my love for the music of that score, but also my slight frustration with how film music usually gets presented in concert suites, as I told you before. Korngold constructed his scores with themes and leitmotifs that develop over the course of the soundtrack and the result is more or less like a huge symphonic poem that tells a story on its own. For this suite I wanted this feeling to prevail. It does loosely follow the story of the movie – up until two thirds of the piece the music is entirely chronological, only after that I moved some sections around to make a more satisfying musical narrative. And it’s important to note that at all times the music is completely Korngold’s own. I only had to sort of solve a puzzle to see which sections would glue together, but I didn’t have to come up with any transitions of my own. Well, there’s one place actually…. one chord I ‘composed’, to move from one cue to the next – that’s really it!
The piece from “Robin Hood” I already made some years ago and I mainly included it to have a bit of a breather on the album – Korngold’s music can be a bit relentless at times, which I have no problem with! – but the score is also incredibly important because it essentially saved his life. While he was writing it in California, his family was escaping the Nazis who had just taken over Austria in 1938, confiscating their home and possessions. And then there’s this piece, one the most fairytale-like pieces that I know of. It’s hard to imagine he wrote this while going through one of the most distressing periods of his life.
In your view, in which ways does the piano and its capabilities as an instrument translate elements of symphonic music, such as Korngold’s?
As a pianist, I feel like we’re often suggesting a lot of things. You know, even a basic expression like a legato we can’t actually play like a violin or a human voice, we can only suggest it! And since the piano offers such a myriad of possible sound colors, it’s an ideal instrument to suggest orchestral instruments on as well.
Also, Korngold himself was a great pianist and he conceived his music at the piano. I’m reminded of some stories of Brahms’ process, it seems like he first composed the music and could decide on its instrumentation later. So the funny thing is, while the piano sonata seems to be like a blueprint of a symphonic piece, the orchestral music sounds natural at the piano, because that’s where it was composed at. You can’t do this with every composer, but with Korngold it seems to work so well.
That leaves us with the Second Piano Sonata, what made you include that piece?
Yes, let’s not forget that Korngold was one of the most prodigious composers that ever lived, who composed an imposing body of music in all genres before the cinema was even invented. The second sonata is an absolutely mind-boggling achievement in my eyes. It’s so full of great ideas, inspired at every turn and so secure in its form – I think that if you didn’t tell anyone he was 13 years old when he wrote it, no one could have guessed. What’s also bizarre to me is that his style is completely formed from the start. Just hear the opening theme, it’s already unmistakably Korngold. It’s also incredibly hard to play, which makes me even more perplexed because it makes me imagine he was actually able to play it as well at that age…
The process of learning this piece was a lot of fun as well because there aren’t many existing recordings of it and I felt more comfortable forming my interpretation from the ground up, using the score, without pressure of what great pianists have done in the past. If felt quite liberating.
Lastly, how do you believe the collaboration with TRPTK adds a different dimension to Korngold’s works through the immersive audio techniques?
I was very conscious of the kind of space that this music needs, quite literally, so it was great that we could look together with TRPTK at what would be the right approach. Ultimately, the big hall of Muziekgebouw Eindhoven seemed to be the perfect acoustic to both Brendon and me. The music is so full of colors and the hall just makes everything come to life. After we finished mastering the album, being able to listen to it in immersive audio was just amazing. It was like I was sitting in the audience of Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, but listening to myself – kind of surreal! I hope to someday have a setup like that at home, haha. I hope I can return to the studio sometime just to have a coffee and listen to some music!
An interview with Ramon van Engelenhoven
On your upcoming album “Korngold: Portrait of a piano” you have combined some of the most famous film music by the Austrian composer Erich Korngold with his opera “Das Wunder der Heliane”, and his second piano sonata which he wrote when he was only 13 years old! We would love to delve deeper in your experience and your connection with these works.
What fascinates you in symphonic film music in general, and the ways in which Korngold’s music in particular enhances the cinematic experience?
Firstly, I’m pretty sure that I heard the sound of a symphony orchestra coming from my TV at home and the movie theater before discovering classical music at all. More specifically, I remember watching the first three “Harry Potter” movies with my friends over and over again which feature these extravagant John Williams scores. At the same time as a 9-year-old, I’m getting recordings of music by Mahler, Strauss, Prokofiev and the sound of it is completely natural to me. I wonder why…? My piano teacher at the time never introduced me to symphonic music, that’s for sure.
Anyway, in my mind I made no particular distinction between the music. I could enjoy Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” as much as “The Empire Strikes Back” – to my ears it was just symphonic music carrying along a story. Enter Korngold! When I discovered his music some years ago (and that of other Hollywood’s Golden Age composers, mostly Jewish refugees from Europe) it was a eureka moment for me as I was finally able to connect some dots. To explain it as simply as I can: he brought his experience of writing Wagnerian operas, with its sense of drama and use of leitmotifs for characters and so on, to the world of cinema.
While I enjoy a good tune like probably most people do, that’s really not my main attraction to film music (I like the term ‘music for film’ way more, by the way). I think the real magic happens when a composer manages to write a score that gives a dramatic arc to a scene, or multiple scenes after each other, and that *despite* the extreme precise timings he has to deal with, it simply comes out sounding as a great piece of music. I’m thinking of the finale from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, or the first love scene from “The Sea Hawk” that I transcribed and recorded for this album – it’s about 7 minutes of music matching exactly what is happening on the screen yet it’s as dramatic as any good opera scene.
The problem I have though is that most of this music rarely gets played or heard and is mostly being buried between dialogue and sound effects. It might not even be on the original soundtrack album! I think that when you look at film music being played in concerts, there’s mostly just short presentations of the most famous tunes and that’s it. It’s like presenting a few snippets of famous leitmotifs from Wagner’s operas and calling it a day. More on this later!
Your dedication to the album began quite some time ago, and you’ve even contacted Korngold’s family! Can you walk us through the journey of this project and how your interactions with his family influenced or inspired your approach to the music?
I knew that when doing a Korngold album I didn’t just want to feature his piano works, most of which were written when he was a child prodigy. I would rather present something that shows a bigger picture of his composing career. I’ve been making transcriptions for a while now and Korngold himself played all of his music at the piano, so it made a lot of sense to me to actually feature arrangements on the album. The only problem was that I needed permission to record these and that took me on quite a journey. Conductor John Mauceri, who recorded many premiere recordings of Korngold’s works, helped me to get in touch with the composer’s grandchildren Kathrin and Leslie and they were extremely generous in helping me not just to get the permission from the publishers but also to obtain the sheet music scores of “The Sea Hawk”, that remain mostly unpublished to this day.
Originally I had made a shorter suite, using snippets of what was published (not much) and filling in some gaps with transcribing the music by ear. That was very time-consuming and ultimately not very satisfying, because I was never completely sure if I ‘got it right’. Getting access to the full scores meant that I could actually feature all the music that I wanted, and I was able to re-work my previous work in great detail.
Right now, Schott music is also planning to publish the sheet music of my transcription of ‘Ich ging zu ihm’, and this is all due to the trust of the Korngold family. It makes me feel very honored and grateful.
How was the experience of having the handwritten orchestrations of “The Sea Hawk” in your hands?
The orchestrations are located at the library of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, which really isn’t around the corner for me. But just around the time I was in touch with USC, I joined a concert tour with Camerata RCO in the US on short notice and our first concert was in Los Angeles. What a coincidence! So I spent about a day at the campus and browsing through all the scores, some 650 (!) pages of them, making notes of what I needed to have so USC could scan the right pages for me. I have to note that these were the handwritings of his orchestrators, but Korngold did conduct from these pages and they had his own red and blue markings from the recording sessions. Amazing to look at history like that.
Also I went through a violin part and one of them had a drawn pirate ship in it – maybe the violinist was a bit bored during rehearsal or lunch break? I have no idea. It was all a bit surreal to look at that and I wish I had taken a picture of it.
This is a very personal album for you, as it mainly includes your own transcriptions of the aria “Ich ging zu ihm” and the soundtracks from the movies “The Adventures of Robin Hood” and “The Sea Hawk”. What inspired you to transcribe these specific works?
“Ich ging zu ihm” was probably the piece that ’sold’ me on Korngold. When I heard it I was just overwhelmed by the beauty of the harmonies, the lushness of the orchestration… well, it’s hard to put into words. Korngold also thought that the opera it is from, ‘Das Wunder der Heliane’, was truly his masterpiece so I chose to open the album with it. I also try to play it wherever I can and if it encourages anyone to check out the original aria I’ll be very happy. I was obviously also quite inspired by the fact that Liszt wrote his well-known transcription of Wagner’s “Isolde’s Liebestod”, to which this music is certainly stylistically related.
The big suite with music from “The Sea Hawk” came from two places: my love for the music of that score, but also my slight frustration with how film music usually gets presented in concert suites, as I told you before. Korngold constructed his scores with themes and leitmotifs that develop over the course of the soundtrack and the result is more or less like a huge symphonic poem that tells a story on its own. For this suite I wanted this feeling to prevail. It does loosely follow the story of the movie – up until two thirds of the piece the music is entirely chronological, only after that I moved some sections around to make a more satisfying musical narrative. And it’s important to note that at all times the music is completely Korngold’s own. I only had to sort of solve a puzzle to see which sections would glue together, but I didn’t have to come up with any transitions of my own. Well, there’s one place actually…. one chord I ‘composed’, to move from one cue to the next – that’s really it!
The piece from “Robin Hood” I already made some years ago and I mainly included it to have a bit of a breather on the album – Korngold’s music can be a bit relentless at times, which I have no problem with! – but the score is also incredibly important because it essentially saved his life. While he was writing it in California, his family was escaping the Nazis who had just taken over Austria in 1938, confiscating their home and possessions. And then there’s this piece, one the most fairytale-like pieces that I know of. It’s hard to imagine he wrote this while going through one of the most distressing periods of his life.
In your view, in which ways does the piano and its capabilities as an instrument translate elements of symphonic music, such as Korngold’s?
As a pianist, I feel like we’re often suggesting a lot of things. You know, even a basic expression like a legato we can’t actually play like a violin or a human voice, we can only suggest it! And since the piano offers such a myriad of possible sound colors, it’s an ideal instrument to suggest orchestral instruments on as well.
Also, Korngold himself was a great pianist and he conceived his music at the piano. I’m reminded of some stories of Brahms’ process, it seems like he first composed the music and could decide on its instrumentation later. So the funny thing is, while the piano sonata seems to be like a blueprint of a symphonic piece, the orchestral music sounds natural at the piano, because that’s where it was composed at. You can’t do this with every composer, but with Korngold it seems to work so well.
That leaves us with the Second Piano Sonata, what made you include that piece?
Yes, let’s not forget that Korngold was one of the most prodigious composers that ever lived, who composed an imposing body of music in all genres before the cinema was even invented. The second sonata is an absolutely mind-boggling achievement in my eyes. It’s so full of great ideas, inspired at every turn and so secure in its form – I think that if you didn’t tell anyone he was 13 years old when he wrote it, no one could have guessed. What’s also bizarre to me is that his style is completely formed from the start. Just hear the opening theme, it’s already unmistakably Korngold. It’s also incredibly hard to play, which makes me even more perplexed because it makes me imagine he was actually able to play it as well at that age…
The process of learning this piece was a lot of fun as well because there aren’t many existing recordings of it and I felt more comfortable forming my interpretation from the ground up, using the score, without pressure of what great pianists have done in the past. If felt quite liberating.
Lastly, how do you believe the collaboration with TRPTK adds a different dimension to Korngold’s works through the immersive audio techniques?
I was very conscious of the kind of space that this music needs, quite literally, so it was great that we could look together with TRPTK at what would be the right approach. Ultimately, the big hall of Muziekgebouw Eindhoven seemed to be the perfect acoustic to both Brendon and me. The music is so full of colors and the hall just makes everything come to life. After we finished mastering the album, being able to listen to it in immersive audio was just amazing. It was like I was sitting in the audience of Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, but listening to myself – kind of surreal! I hope to someday have a setup like that at home, haha. I hope I can return to the studio sometime just to have a coffee and listen to some music!