Hollywood Film Composer

Before the Austrian composer and conductor Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) became one of Hollywood’s most influential film composers, he was a child piano prodigy. Growing up in a musical family (his father was a music critic; his brother was a musician), Korngold began composing at age 7. At age 11, he composed his ballet Der Schneemann; at age 12, he composed a piano trio; and at age 14 he wrote the Schauspiel-Ouvertüre, his first orchestral score. By his late teens, Korngold had also written operas and chamber music. In his 20s, Korngold began composing for theater productions across Europe where he really started to draw the attention of other musicians and famous conductors, including Richard Strauss and Giacomo Puccini.

Max Reinhardt, a theater and film director, invited Korngold to Hollywood to write the film music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935). During his career, Korngold composed a total of 16 Hollywood films, and is best known for his scores to Anthony Adverse (1936) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). He won Oscars for both films. Korngold was the first well-known international composer to write Hollywood film scores.

Korngold began to focus on “serious” compositions during his later years, including his Violin Concerto. Two of the themes in the concerto's first movement and the main theme from the last movement are direct copies from his film scores that have then been expanded and developed.

The piece premiered in 1947 with the St. Louis Symphony under the direction of Vladimir Golschmann, with Jascha Heifetz as the violin soloist. Heifetz also performed the piece at Carnegie Hall later that same year, and Heifetz’s performances of the work quickly made it Korngold’s most popular piece.