The Adelphi Orchestra, Violinist Randall Goosby To Perform Korngold's Triumphant Concert Opus

The Adelphi Orchestra will feature Randall Mitsuo Goosby, Violin (First Prize winner of the Adelphi Orchestra Competition, First Prize winner of the Sphinx Competition ) in the rarely performed and defiantly triumphant Korngold Concerto for Violin in D major, Op. 35. Randall Goosby's performance of the Korngold Violin Concerto will be the centerpiece in a program entitled "From Vienna with Love" which will also feature Strauss's Overture to Die Fledermaus and concludes with the beautiful Symphony no 2 in D major by Brahms. The concert, conducted by Richard Owen on Sunday October 27th at 7PM will take place at NYC's historic Good Shepherd - Faith Presbyterian Church located in the heart of Lincoln Center. Tickets on sale now.

Widely regarded as one of cinema's preeminent film composers of all time Erich Wolfgang Korngold's extraordinary career defined music in Hollywood's Golden Age. Korngold was honored by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as the first individual musician to win an Oscar for his original film score to the 1938 classic swashbuckler "The Adventures of Robin Hood." When Korngold stepped away the silver screen in 1946, his extraordinary career created a compositional legacy of over twenty film scores, four Academy Award nominations and two Oscars. Despite his cinematic fame Korngold is also considered a composer whose "forgotten music" was impacted by anti-Semitic prejudice and persecution by the Nazi's regime. Twenty first century audiences are generally unaware that in addition to his stature and success as a cinematic pioneer, Korngold was also one of the 20th century's most prodigious European composers for the classical and operatic stage.

With the Adelphi Orchestra's upcoming concert "From Vienna with Love" in both New York City and New Jersey, featuring the 22-year-old violin prodigy Randall Mitsuo Goosby playing Korngold's infrequently performed concerto, the Adelphi Orchestra, under the executive leadership of Sylvia Rubin and baton of Artistic Director and principal conductor Richard Owen, is about to shed light on Korngold's complete musical persona obscured by changing geopolitical tides that produced both World Wars, the rise of the Nazi regime and the frank anti-Semitism which paralyzed and obfuscated Korngold's equally important legacy as an influential classical composer before and after his fame in Hollywood.

For violinist Randall Goosby the virtuosic Concerto for Violin in D major, Op. 35 has special resonance in his life. In 2009 Korngold's concerto was the music the then thirteen-year-old Randall listened to while traveling with his family from Tennessee to Colorado to perform in Durango as the winner of the Young Artists Concerto Competition at the Music in the Mountains Festival, Not only did Korngold's lush, sweeping music provide the "sound scape" to the magnificent landscape Randall experienced, it proved to be the preamble to a life changing event. In Durango Goosby first met his early mentor and teacher, the acclaimed violinist Philippe Quint, regarded by many as having performed the quintessential recording of Korngold Concerto for Violin in D major, Op. 35 of his generation. Following in his mentor's footsteps, Goosby pursued his bachelor's degree in Violin Performance at The Juilliard School, under the instruction of reigning violin virtuoso, Itzhak Perlman, and Catherine Cho. Randal currently studies at Julliard in pursuit of a master's degree under the tutelage of Donald Weilerstein and Laurie Smukler.

Born in 1897 in Vienna, Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a child prodigy whose talents as a pianist and composer were compared to Mozart's. At the age of 11 Korngold composed his ballet Der Schneemann (The Snowman), which became a sensation when performed at the Vienna Court for Emperor Franz Josef in 1910. By age 14 Erich wrote his first orchestral score, the Schauspiel Ouverture; his Sinfonietta appeared the following year, as well as his first two operas, Der Ring des Polykrates and Violanta, in 1914.

While still in his twenties Korngold was active in the theatre throughout Europe. With the success of his opera, Die tote Stadt, which he conducted in numerous opera houses, Korngold had reached the zenith of his fame as a composer of opera and concert music. Richard Strauss and Giacomo Puccini heaped praise on him, and many famous conductors, soloists and singers added Korngold's works to their repertoires. During this period Korngold's collaboration with Max Reinhardt, the legendary director and Saltsburg Festival founder, in theatrical adaptations of the works of Johann Strauss, Jacques Offenbach in Berlin, Paris and London became the foundation of pivotal professional relationship which would forever change the course of Korngold's life.

In 1935, against the historical backdrop of growing fascism, the rise of the Nazi party and the great depression, Reinhardt invited Korngold to Hollywood to work with him on an ambitious Warner Brother's film based on Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Korngold was particularly attracted to the project following Reinhardt's enormously successful Hollywood Bowl stage production a "A Midsummer Night's Dream" produced at the invitation of the California Festival Association and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Reinhardt wished to employ Korngold's prodigious musical gifts and appetite for technologic innovation to the landmark film project envisioned by Warner Brothers. An anecdote shared by the Korngold Society profoundly demonstrates Korngold's inherent aptitude for assimilating technology as a compositional tool, "On being shown around the studio, Korngold asked a technician how long one foot of film was; "Twelve inches" came the cynical reply. "No", Korngold insisted "...I mean, how long does it last in time on the screen?" Nobody had ever asked this before and someone went to find out. When the answer came - two thirds of a second - Korngold smiled and said "Ach....exactly the same length of time as the first two measures of Mendelssohn's Scherzo!"

With Korngold's completion of the score for "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Warner Brothers' executives were so impressed by his achievement they signed Korngold to a multiyear contract, giving Erich complete artistic freedom to score the films that interested him. And while it was the hope of the California Festival Association that Reinhardt's artistically dazzling production would lead to the creation of a cultural festival in Los Angeles on par with Reinhardt's Salzburg Festival, little could anyone imagine Reinhardt's 1935 film version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (for which Korngold both re-arranged and conducted Mendelssohn's famous score) would prove to democratize the power of music through the cinematic film score - and ultimately create a cultural phenomenon on a scale, scope and significance never before imagined.

The artistic impact achieved by the film and its music was recognized by the Nazi's who banned "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Germany declaiming the Jewish backgrounds of Reinhardt, Korngold and composer Felix Mendelssohn as "degenerate." The Nazis believed that as powerful as the visual arts, theatre, or literature might be, music was the most impactful of the arts, the most effective way to seduce and sway the masses. As the Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels put it, "Music affects the heart and emotions more than the intellect. Where then could the heart of a nation beat stronger than in the huge masses, in which the heart of a nation has found its true home?"

In March 1933, Goebbels took control of all German radio stations and the press, summarily firing the art and music critics who did not support his aesthetic agenda. One month later, on 7 April 1933, the Law for the Re-establishment of the Civil Service was passed, which led to the widespread dismissal of Jewish conductors, singers, music teachers, and administrators. In July, the two most important composers at the illustrious Prussian Academy of Art, Arnold Schoenberg and Franz Schreker, were dismissed. By the end of 1935 many German-Jewish musicians had fled Germany to the USA, England, or Palestine. While voices of protest were silenced in Germany, significant protests came from both Jewish and non-Jewish musicians and composers in the United States. With the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany on March 12, 1938 Korngold's access and ties to the Vienna he knew were irrevocably severed.

In this unprecedented and incomprehensible reality, Erich Wolfgang Korngold vowed to abstain from composing music to be performed in the classical concert hall or opera house, until Hitler, "that monster in Europe" and the Nazi regime were defeated. Korngold declared he would only write music to support his family, and to contribute to those displaced by the war (and to those organizations devoted to their assistance) through the money he made as a film composer.

With the surrender of Berlin and the defeat of the Nazi government in 1945 Korngold returned to composing for the concert stage. At the urging of his friend and colleague, the Jewish Polish violinist Bronis?aw Huberman, the composition began: and the result was Korngold's Concerto for Violin in D major, Op. 35.

The concerto was dedicated to Alma Mahler, the widow of Korngold's childhood mentor Gustav Mahler. It was premiered on 15 February 1947 by Jascha Heifetz and the St. Louis Symphony under conductor Vladimir Golschmann. On 30 March 1947, Heifetz played the concerto in Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Efrem Kurtz.

Adelphi Orchestra

"From Vienna with Love"

October 27, 2018 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Richard Owen, conductor

Randall Mitsuo Goosby, violin

Good Shepherd Faith - Presbyterian Church
152 W 66th St

Tickets: General Admission $25; Students Free