Suite, Op.23

Präludium und Fuge

Walzer

Groteske

Lied

Rondo-Finale

When Erich Korngold left Austria for America in 1934 it was not because of political pressure and it was not in the intention of staying there for any length of time. After his precocious success with his opera Die tote Stadt in 1920 he was still one of the most highly regarded composers in Vienna and he was still looking forward to developing an already illustrious career in that city, not least in the opera house.

While he was in America, however, working on film scores in Hollywood with his director friend Max Reinhardt, the political situation in Austria deteriorated. The Anschluss and the effective banning of what was to be his last opera, Die Kathrin, convinced him that he would be better off in the film studios in America. Although he attempted to re-establish himself as a composer in Vienna after the War, he never really made it – the demands of the cinema seemed to have sapped him of any originality he might have had – and he returned to America to spend the rest of his life where he was most appreciated, among his Oscars in Hollywood.

It is an indication of the composer’s standing in pre-War Vienna that when Paul Wittgenstein, a pianist who had lost his right arm in the First World War, set out to create a repertoire for left hand only, Korngold was one of the first composers he turned to – before Ravel, Prokofiev and even Richard Strauss. The Suite Op.23 the third of Korngold’s Wittgenstein commissions, was completed in 1930 – by which time, as is quite clear from the opening piano cadenza, he had heard Ravel’s Concerto for left hand. Scored for piano with two violins and a cello, rather than the regular string trio, it is more a divertimento than a piano quartet. There is scarcely more than a gesture to fugal form in the melodious Präludium and much of the rest of the work survives on its charm and its wit – a poetically attenuated Viennese waltz with just a hint of the Second Viennese School in its colouring, a playfully grotesque scherzo with a lyrical middle section, a short Lied to be sung by sentimental strings, and a harmonically wayward finale that ingeniously combines rondo with variation form.