I’ve loved the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold since I was a kid. I was humming the quarterstaff contest from “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938) before I knew a thing about classical music, thanks to enraptured television viewings of the Errol Flynn classic. On one memorable occasion, my best friend and I took down his mom’s curtain rods after the movie and sang Korngold’s gleeful fight music while dueling all over the house.
What I wouldn’t know until I was in high school, when I discovered the benchmark Charles Gerhardt LPs of his classic film scores, was that Korngold was one of classical music’s most gifted child prodigies. The toast of Vienna (Mahler declared him a genius and Richard Strauss was “terrified” by his talent), he was already writing operas in his teens. A contract with Warner Bros. brought further fame and fortune and likely saved his life. He was in Hollywood, writing the music for “Robin Hood,” when Hitler annexed Austria.
Korngold remained in the U.S. throughout the war, providing scores for Flynn and Bette Davis vehicles. Davis’ “Deception” (1946) brought a noir sensibility to a sinister love triangle involving three musicians. Claude Rains plays an overbearing composer, who attempts to push a psychologically fragile cellist (Casablanca’s Paul Henreid), who survived a concentration camp, past the breaking point with the rigors of his new cello concerto! Naturally, music would play a central part in the story, and Korngold provided an onscreen concerto for the film’s dramatic center.
Once upon a time, Korngold’s postwar Violin Concerto (in 1947 witheringly dismissed by the New York Sun’s Irving Kolodin as “more corn than gold”) was something of a rarity in concert halls, but in recent decades a younger generation of performers has given it a boost into the standard repertoire. Korngold’s Cello Concerto and Piano Concerto for the Left Hand have not been so lucky. Because much of it had to be performed on screen, as part of the action of the film, the cello work is understandably shorter. It could be awkward and expensive to include it on a real-life classical music concert, with the orchestra having to pay a star soloist for a work only half the length of a standard concerto.
So it’s very seldom done, and frankly, even for a Korngold admirer like myself, I always regarded it as something of a poor stepchild. Not that I don’t adore the melodic content (of a character I am certain would NOT please Kolodin). There are some heart-meltingly lovely moments, like pools of sweet refreshment disturbed by intermittent squalls. Following in the footsteps of Liszt (who wrote no cello concertos), Korngold takes elements of the standard concerto form and compresses them into a vertiginously brief span, roiling with dramatic tension. On recordings, the overheated soloist is often pushing back against aggressive tutti passages.
I’ve only heard it performed live once before, so it was with great anticipation that I attended Friday evening’s concert of the Princeton University Orchestra at Richardson Auditorium, on which Korngold’s concerto formed the centerpiece of the program (which was repeated on Saturday night). Now, this is a student orchestra, mind you, but the young musicians play as if they’ve long ago forgotten the fact. Michael Pratt, the ensemble’s music director since 1977, has no qualms about programming the most challenging and at times esoteric works in the repertoire. Granted the personnel turns over all the time, as the students graduate, but I’ve heard this group tackle “Ein Heldenleben,” the complete “Daphnis and Chloé,” several Mahler symphonies, and “The Dream of Gerontius!”
The Korngold soloist was Max Salzinger, now a Princeton sophomore, and he played beautifully, with all the assurance of someone who had clearly internalized the score. The performance was spacious, sumptuous, and wistfully romantic. Lyrical passages breathed. Soloist and orchestra offered a more expansive account, or the appearance of one, than those to which I had grown accustomed. The experience was luxurious and revelatory. Suddenly the piece sounded less like a made-to-order Hollywood film concerto and more like an honest-to-goodness concert work that, yes, really does deserve to take its place alongside the Violin Concerto. This was the Korngold I didn’t know I needed. Listening to it made me feel like a teenager again.
Keep in mind, few of these university performers are music majors. Most of them are pursuing degrees in other fields. Salzinger is an aspiring economist. But clearly the cello is central to his being. He’s already had a ton of experience playing with the orchestra of Indiana’s Hotchkiss School (from which he graduated in 2025), the Hartford Symphony, and the Indianapolis and Interlochen Youth Orchestras, among others. Last year, he won Princeton’s Concerto Competition. It was not the first contest in which he’s come out on top.
Equally impressive was the concert’s opening performance, of Alberto Ginastera’s “Pampeana No. 3,” a piece evocative of the pampas, the grasslands of the composer’s native Argentina, which was played at a near-professional standard. Seriously, this was as fine a performance of this piece as I will likely ever experience, especially live. And what a battery of percussion at its center! I’d be lying if I said I was shocked by the quality of the playing, but it was still a great pleasure to be reminded of just how good these student musicians can be – 80+ performers, with two harps, piano, celesta, and three percussionists, putting their shoulders to it. The woodwind playing, especially some flute duets, played by Liam Browne and Hugh Choi, lent idiomatic color.
The second half of the program, consisting of Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8, was markedly wilder and woollier, which made me wonder if the bulk of the rehearsal time had been devoted to the other, less familiar pieces. Any kind of shading in the first movement was out the window, with most of the music played at one dynamic – loud – so that many felicitous details of the composer’s score were overwhelmed. I would be remiss, however, not to to give credit to trumpeters Austin Clinard and Matt Cline, who nailed their exposed fanfares both here and in the last movement, which must have taken not only technique, but nerves of steel.
The middle movements were better, especially the second, which was presented with more variety and shading, and all the soloists hit their marks and played with confidence. The third movement, an elegant waltz, was a little underarticulated, but mostly successful. But in the last movement, we were back to everyone going full tilt, subtlety be damned. But my goodness, what an exciting noise!
With the crazy chromaticism of Dvořák’s coda, just as the players are required to really bring on the steam, it already seems as if the entire work is about to fly off the rails (by coincidence, Dvořák was a great admirer of trains), but pile on the youthful energy of the Princeton University Orchestra, with timpanist Milo Salvucci, and you really experience the terror of the sublime. The sensation was so harrowing, I couldn’t help but burst into laughter. What great fun!
So, they’re not the Czech Philharmonic. Who cares? Put your hands together for these kids. They did a great job.
The next set of concerts will take place on November 20 & 21, and will include Benjamin Britten’s “Four Sea Interludes” from “Peter Grimes” and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 “Pathétique.”
On February 26 & 27, winners of this year’s concerto competition will be heard.
In the spring, on April 15 & 16, Pratt will conduct Mahler’s Symphony No. 9.
For more information, visit https://orchestra.princeton.edu/current-season/