...if I can't post a last blast of Korngold today, then when can I?! Here is the beginning of the rarely-if-ever-seen Give Us This Night, with the incomparable Jan Kiepura singing his heart out in Sorrento. Enjoy.
In case you were wondering, my birthday present is an Enescu letter from 1947 to add to our autograph collection. We missed a Korngold one on Ebay by 2 seconds.
Speaking of Enescu, who taught Ida Haendel, there will be more very soon about the extraordinary day we spent at the Razumovsky Academy listening to Haendels' masterclasses on Sunday. There was also a surprise in the evening concert.
13 comments:
Happy Birthday Jessica! It was my birthday on the 9th! I had no idea you were a Sagittarius too! Is EWK part of the astrological mix do you think? Too bad about Ebay.
B
Blimey - there's a thing. Weird! Hope you had a super day, Brendan.
I've encountered so many bizarre coincidences recently around my next novel, 'Hungarian Dances', that currently I'd believe pretty much anything.
Happy Birthday!!!!
Have a great day and Happy Birthday!
If I'd have known in advance I'd have got Robin to record a special version of 'Happy Birthday' for you!
A sweet thought, Anna - thank you - but I'm doing my best to forget about this birthday and only mentioned it to justify treating myself, and all of you, to Kiepura singing Korngold!
Happy Birthday, Jessica!
Happy Birthday, Jessica. Many happy returns. xx
Could someone please invent a time machine so we could get Jan Kiepura to sing Paul at Covent Garden in 2009? Please? :-)
Happy birthday, almost a Capricorn....
Since this is a Korngold post perhaps I could add something that has just occured to me. I have had quite a Korngold year - read your excellent book, saw Renee Fleming singing at the Proms, heard Znaider playing the violin concerto and went to Heliane. But it was when I was listening to Previn conducting the film music on the train this morning that I realised who I would compare Korngold to - and that is Walton. Not so much the style but the overall quality of the output. There - I have lit the blue touchpaper and I will now retire!
The highlight of my year was Fleming singing "Ich ging zu ihm" (incomparable and a great green dress to boot!) and the low point was Andreas Schmidt singing with his chin in his hand.
Any thoughts?! And Happy Birthday too.
That's an excellent point, Edward. And I think there is a certain similarity of style, at least in the percussion-rich orchestration and the elan of the music. I occasionally switch on the radio, hear something I don't recognise and wonder whether it's a piece of Korngold that had somehow escaped me. It always turns out to be Walton.
I too think Walton & Korngold have a lot in common. I have always thought Korngold would have made a wonderful composer for the English Coronation Service and there are distinct similarities between his F# Symphony and Walton's 1st.
The Kiepura clip is sublime Jessica and the best scene in the entire movie. Checkout that set built at Laguna Beach and demolished after filming completed. And not a model boat in sight! It is so sad that this battered, fuzzy 16mm print is all that appears to survive for this film now, as the original negative has disintergrated.
And, to thrown in my two pence worth, I think that Walton's "Troilus and Cressida" has pride of place alongside EWK's stage works in the pantheon of the unfairly neglected.
And hmm. Okay, so there is a more or less understandable reason why "The Constant Nymph" languishes unreleased, but what's the excuse for the hard-to-getness of "Give us this Night"?
Give Us This Night never appears to have been released for television for reasons I have been unable to determine. As a result, only one dupe negative plus the nitrate camera negative were retained in the Paramount archives. In 1975 I was fortunate to be able to view the dupe positive at the studio ( wonderful quality)but since then, both of these have disinitegrated thanks to poor storage and lack of care.
A butchered subtitled and very poor qulity print exisits in the Czech Film Archive and the Kiepura Estate owns a very poor 16mm copy of the complete film. Other than that, nothing survives. For this reason, other than clips on YOUTUBE, we are unlikely to ever see this movie being released on TV or Home Video.
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