Kristof Barati, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Erich Wolfgang Korngold was one of the most gifted of young teenage composers, in the company of Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert and a few others. His life became a mess, through no fault of his own. Born in 1897 in the Austro-Hungarian empire, the end of his teenage years saw the collapse and disappearance of the old Austria after the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles. Then, in the 1920s and 1930s, the iconoclasts such as Schönberg, Webern, Berg, Bartok and Stravinsky heralded the end of fashionable tonality and strong links with the music of the nineteenth century. The 1930s and the rise of Nazism saw Korngold (a Jew) having to flee Europe and settle in California where he made a (good) living writing “people's music” for the Hollywood studios; coincidentally during the same period in the USSR, composers there were also faced with the choice of writing “people's music”, or having their voices never heard.

Korngold died in 1957 at the early age of 60, disillusioned with life, with the frittering away of his prodigious talent, with his aborted attempt to re-establish himself in post-1945 Vienna. I've always loved his violin concerto, which has become quite mainstream in the past decade or so. His sonata for violin and piano was written when he was only sixteen years old. It lasts some 38 minutes – far too long and sprawling – but after just a few seconds, one can hear unmistakably that it was written by Korngold, with his characteristic bitter-sweet late Viennese harmonies. It received its premiere in 1913 with Carl Flesch and Artur Schnabel, no less, and I've had a recording of the sonata for many years, played by the Americans Glenn Dicterow and Israela Margalit. I have now received a second recording, played by the Hungarians, Kristof Barati and Gabor Farkas.

It does not join the violin concerto or the Much Ado About Nothing music in my Korngold pantheon, but it is well played and the recording is well balanced. Also on the CD is a live performance (2014) of Korngold's violin concerto, with the Philharmonie Zuiderniederland. For a live recording, the sound is excellent, although I would have preferred Barati's sound to have been a little more forward, particularly in the last movement. Barati is not a violinist who indulges in slow tempi, and this is a big plus in Korngold's concerto where the slow movement, in particular, is often brought to a near stand-still by other violinists. This is a lucky concerto, with many fine recordings over the past decade or so. Barati's live performance is pretty well as good as any, and better than most, and the rarely played or heard sonata is good coupling for the Brilliant Classics CD. The orchestra makes a real contribution (and Korngold knew all about orchestration).