On today’s date in 1910, a young Austrian composer had his first major work staged at the Vienna Court Opera. It was quite a prestigious affair, all in all, with the Vienna Philharmonic in the pit and none other than Franz Josef, the Austrian Emperor, in the audience.
All that was enough to go to any young composer’s head — and the composer in question, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, was very young indeed. He was 13 when his ballet-pantomime The Snowman premiered in Vienna. Actually, he’d written the piano version of The Snowman in 1908, when he was 11. Korngold’s teacher, composer Alexander von Zemlinsky, orchestrated the piece for the Vienna Court Opera performance, but it wasn’t very long before little Erich was preparing his own orchestrations, thank you very much.
By his 20s, Korngold was celebrated throughout Europe as composer of operas and concert hall works. Korngold settled in Hollywood in the late 1930s, as his Jewish heritage made a career in Nazi Europe impossible. His film scores for classic Errol Flynn adventure movies — “SVASH-boo-klers” as Korngold called them in his thick Viennese accent — made him famous in America.
Erich Wolfgang von Korngold (1897-1957): The Snowman; Northwest German Philharmonic; Werner Andreas Albert, conductor; CPO 999 037
Erich Wolfgang von Korngold (1897-1957): Violin Concerto; Chantal Juillet, violin; Berlin Radio Symphony; John Mauceri, conductor; London 452 481