polished and affectionate performance of the delightful suite Korngold drew from his 1918 incidental score to a Vienna Burgtheater production of Much Ado about Nothing. They include the fragrant (and previously unrecorded) 'Garden Music' that opens Act 3, the haunting main theme of which Korngold subsequently incorporated into the third movement of his violin and piano arrangement (beloved of such legendary fiddlers as Heifetz, Kreisler, Elman and Seidel).
Other rarities include the first recording of the Op 32 Prayer for tenor, female choir and organ, as well as a long-overdue digital successor to Charles Gerhardt's pioneering RCA performance of Tomorrow, a six-minute work for mezzo-soprano, female choir and orchestra, originally written for the 1943 film The Constant Nymph.
Another first recording is the orchestral version of 'Nachtwanderer' from the six Einfache Lieder.
Korngold orchestrated these songs in 1917, and in this guise most of the rest of the set has been recorded by Barbara Hendricks on EMI. Six years later, in 1923, Korngold orchestrated his masterly Abschiedslieder of 1920, whose demandingly wide-ranging melodic lines occasionally strain the otherwise appealing mezzo here, Gigi Mitchell-Velasco. That apart, these consistently communicative performances – captured in decent, truthfully balanced sound – arouse nothing but praise. A must for all Korngold fans.