Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Korngold as Ghostwriter on “Picture Perfect”

Errol Flynn writes a ballet? Charles Boyer composes a tone poem? Claude Rains writes a cello concerto!

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ve got three examples from Hollywood’s Golden Age of movies about fictional composers. These, of course, required music allegedly written by the characters, and this was provided by two-time Academy Award-winner Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Korngold is probably best known to movie buffs as the composer for Flynn swashbucklers such as “The Adventures of Robin Hood” and “The Sea Hawk,” but his filmography is more varied than one might at first suspect. No matter what the subject, Korngold could be counted on to bring that opulent fin de siècle gloss, developed in a Vienna steeped in Mahler and Strauss.

We’ll hear music from “Escape Me Never” (1947), a slightly preposterous melodrama about two composer brothers who become rivals in love; “The Constant Nymph” (1943), about a would-be romantic bond between a composer struggling to find his true voice and an admiring girl on the verge of womanhood who develops deeper feelings for him; and “Deception” (1946), about a cellist reunited with his former love, who had believed him killed during the war, and the vindictive composer who attempts to shatter his psyche through grueling rehearsals of his latest concerto.

“Deception” was Korngold’s last, wholly original score, though he was lured back to Hollywood for one final project, “Magic Fire” (1955), a biopic of the composer Richard Wagner, for which he adapted selections from Wagner’s operas. Furthermore, Korngold makes an appearance onscreen (!) as conductor Hans Richter. The film was subject to heavy cuts prior to its U.S. release and was not a success.

Hollywood seldom gets it right when it comes to portraying the process of the composer, but Korngold, true to his name, did his best to spin gold from corn, producing some appropriately grand utterances, albeit condensed to only a few minutes of screen time. Quite a task for this figure who made his greatest mark in opera.

Join me for these examples of Korngold as ghostwriter, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!

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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu

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Follow the link to hear Korngold improvise on themes from “The Flying Dutchman” (with entertaining stills):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4bNEw1nu3I

MAGIC FIRE: When the actor who was hired to play Hans Richter failed to show, Korngold was rushed into make-up (hence, the fake beard). This is the only existing footage of Korngold conducting.

August 7, 2026
Wagner Out the Wazoo on “Picture Perfect,” “Sweetness and Light,” and “The Lost Chord”

In 1876, the four operas – or music dramas (the composer’s preferred term) – of Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” were performed together for the first time, from August 13 through August 17, at the inaugural Bayreuth Festival, in the Festspielhaus (a theater of the composer’s design) in Bayreuth, Germany. The Bayreuth Festival has continued as a mecca for Wagnerites down to the present day.

To mark the 150th anniversary of the “Ring,” all three of my radio shows this weekend will tie in, in one way or another, with this most grandiose and influential undertaking.

First, today on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll have music from four films in which Erich Wolfgang Korngold served as ghostwriter for onscreen composers, providing a ballet for Errol Flynn’s in “Escape Me Never” (1946), a tone poem for Charles Boyer in “The Constant Nymph” (1943), and a cello concerto for Claude Rains in “Deception” (1946). More to the point, Korngold actually appears onscreen – hastily made-up when the actor hired for the purpose didn’t show – to play conductor Hans Richter in the Wagner biopic “Magic Fire,” for which he adapted selections from, yes, the Ring Cycle.

Then tomorrow morning, on “Sweetness and Light,” it will be the unlikeliest “light music” program, as we listen to piano transcriptions by Carl Tausig and Louis Brassin, the “Siegfried Idyll” (probably the sweetest thing Wagner ever wrote), humorist Anna Russell’s classic routine “The Ring of the Nibelungs (An Analysis),” and a cheeky work for piano four-hands by Gabriel Fauré & André Messager, in which they distill somber motifs from the cycle into a frivolous ballroom dance.

Finally, tomorrow afternoon/evening (depending on where you are), it will be an hour of historic recordings of “Die Walküre” – the second of the “Ring” operas (er, music dramas) – by Lawrence Tibbett, with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra, in 1934, and Lotte Lehmann and Lauritz Melchior, with Bruno Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic, in 1935. Also, we’ll hear Karl Muck conducting selections from Wagner’s “Parsifal” at the actual Festspielhaus, in 1927. The recording will feature actual bells of Wagner’s design, which were later melted down for munitions by the Nazis.

Hojotoho! Get out your party hats (helmets with horns and wings, of course), as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the “Ring” this weekend, on KWAX Classical Oregon!

Stream the shows, wherever you are, at the times below:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Here’s the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu

August 7, 2026
Tyrannical Sea Captains on “Picture Perfect”

This week on “Picture Perfect,” taste the lash and prepare to be keelhauled! We’ll have music from movies featuring tyrannical sea captains.

Tyranny and sadism are common ingredients in nautical adventure films, where hard-bitten sea captains find it “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.”

At least that’s the mantra of Wolf Larsen, who does his best to uphold the philosophy of Milton’s Satan, in Jack London’s “The Sea Wolf” (1941). Larsen is a tough Norwegian sea captain who presides over his ship, the Ghost, with strength and brutality.

Edward G. Robinson plays Larsen. John Garfield is the working class seaman who opposes him. And Ida Lupino is the castaway with a past, with whom he falls in love in spite of himself. The score is by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who also provided the music for the seafaring adventures of Errol Flynn.

Captain Ahab requires little introduction. Everyone knows his ivory leg and his obsessive quest for the White Whale. Gregory Peck plays him in a film version of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” (1956), which was adapted by Ray Bradbury and directed by John Huston. The score is by English composer Philip Sainton.

Humphrey Bogart was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as Lieutenant Commander Phillip Francis Queeg, in a big screen adaptation of Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny” (1954). Queeg, in charge of a U.S. Navy destroyer-minesweeper, is pushed over the edge by his obsession with strawberries pilfered from the officers’ mess. Max Steiner’s upbeat, patriotic theme provides a nice counterpoint to the interpersonal turmoil aboard the Caine.

Finally, the most iconic of tyrannical sea captains, Captain Bligh, is represented by “Mutiny on the Bounty” (1962). Historical novelists Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall make hay from the 1789 insurrection aboard the HMS Bounty.

The classic film version from 1935 starred Charles Laughton as Bligh and Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian. The remake featured Trevor Howard as Bligh, with Marlon Brando, envisioning Christian as a kind of high seas dandy.

It’s said that Brando essentially directed all his own scenes himself. The film was colossal failure, earning back only $13 million of its $19 million budget. Nonetheless, it managed to inspire Bronislau Kaper to compose one of his most monumental scores.

Take a bucket of salt water with your stripes, you dog! Then join me for tyrannical sea captains on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!

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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu

July 31, 2026
Picaresque Adventures on “Picture Perfect”

Calling all rapscallions and scapegraces! This week on “Picture Perfect,” get ready to revel in some freewheeling lack of judgment, with an hour of films based on picaresque novels.

For those of you who weren’t English majors, the picaresque novel is a literary genre often characterized by the presence of rogues or anti-heroes as protagonists, episodic, wayward structures, and, not infrequently, low humor.

We’ll hear music from “The Reivers,” after William Faulkner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, a coming-of-age story about a boy swept into automobile theft and illicit horseracing in the American South. Mark Rydell directed the 1969 film, which stars Steve McQueen as the rakish Boon Hogganbeck and features narration by Burgess Meredith. John Williams wrote the breezy Americana score.

Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is frequently categorized as an American picaresque. It’s certainly one of the funniest of “serious” books. A middling film adaptation was made in 1960, directed by Michael Curtiz, with Tony Randall given top billing, shifting the focus of the story to the con artistry of the King and the Duke. It features an evocative score by Jerome Moross.

If Hervey Allen’s “Anthony Adverse” had any humor to begin with, it was definitely lost in translation. (Too bad the novel was written in English.) However, the 1936 screen adaptation certainly does sprawl. One could say it’s picaresque in the worst way. It just doesn’t go anywhere. It does, however, feature a top-notch cast (Frederic March, Olivia De Havilland, Claude Rains, etc.) and an Academy Award-winning score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

While the modern picaresque novel has its roots in the Renaissance, the genre really seemed to hit its stride in the 18th century, with comic novelists such as Henry Fielding. Fielding’s “Tom Jones,” perhaps the quintessential picaresque, was made into a film in 1963. It went on to win Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Tony Richardson), Best Adapted Screenplay (John Osborne), and Best Original Score (John Addison). Addison’s music suits Richardson’s quirky virtuosity like an off-kilter powdered wig.

We’re up to no good, with an hour of picaresque adventures, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!

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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu

July 10, 2026
Erich Wolfgang Korngold on “Picture Perfect”

May 29 marks the birthday of one of my favorite composers: Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957). Thanks to a steady diet of Errol Flynn films, Korngold will forever be a part of the soundtrack to my life.

Korngold went from being one of Europe’s most astounding musical prodigies – his works admired by Mahler, Strauss and Puccini, and championed by Schnabel, Weingartner and Klemperer – to becoming one of Hollywood’s transformative film composers. He is a link from Old World opulence to New World fantasy, his music gracing a number of Warner Brothers’ classic historical adventures.

The best ones starred Flynn, and this week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll hear music from “The Sea Hawk” (1940) and “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938), as well as the mostly forgotten “Another Dawn” (1937). Flynn stars alongside Kay Francis and Ian Hunter (who would go on to play Richard the Lionheart in “Robin Hood”) in this love triangle involving pilots in a British desert colony.

The film may be an obscurity to all save classic movie buffs, but Korngold thought enough of his music that he salvaged the main title as the opening theme of his Violin Concerto, premiered by Heifetz in 1947.

It was an invitation from theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt that brought Korngold to Hollywood in the first place, for a cinematic adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1935). The film stars James Cagney, Dick Powell and Olivia de Havilland, in her big screen debut, with Mickey Rooney an irrepressible Puck.

For the project, Korngold adapted the famous incidental music of Felix Mendelssohn, interweaving material from Mendelssohn’s symphonies and orchestrating some of the “Songs without Words.” Even so, the music bears the composer’s unmistakable stamp, as you’ll hear in the opening number, lifted from the “Scottish Symphony,” but infused with plenty of Korngoldian swagger.

I hope you’ll join me, as the playlist is all-Korngold this week on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!

Happy birthday, EWK!

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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu

May 29, 2026

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