Korngold - String Quartets
Doric String Quartet
Chandos CHAN10611

Release date September 2010

With one highly successful recording under their belts (the Wigmore Hall Live recording of Haydn String Quartets released last year), the Doric String Quartet have again struck gold with their latest release: Korngold's String Quartets. Erich Korngold is known primarily for his film scores, opera and orchestral works, so this disc, presenting the three quartets in chronological order, comes as something of a revelation. String Quartet no. 1 was begun in 1920, when the former child prodigy had just completed the opera Die tote Stadt, but not finished until three years later. Dedicated to the Rose Quartet who gave the first performance in 1924, the quartet is a substantial work in A major lasting over 32 minutes. Though fundamentally tonal the work is highly chromatic and complex, resulting in some thoroughly original ideas. The Doric revel in the lush chromaticism and play with a beautifully blended sound where needed. It was another ten years before String Quartet no. 2 in E flat major was written and the style is quite different. Perhaps the most laid-back of the three, this shows the more humorous side of the composer, with lilting melodies and a jaunt into the world of the Viennese waltz in the last movement. Another ten years had passed by the time Korngold began his third and final quartet, again opting for a major key, this time D. By then he was living in Hollywood in enforced exile following the Nazi occupation in Austria. In this quartet the composer draws on material from his film scores. The slow movement Sostenuto. Like a Folk Tune for example uses the love theme from the score The Sea Wolf and is most beautiful, the rounded string sound produced by the Doric enhancing the wistful nature to the full. The finale provides an energetic and thoroughly optimistic finish to this great disc.

Reviewed by Dawn Cooke