Erich Wolfgang Korngold THE SEA HAWK THE CONSTANT NYMPH
The Sea Hawk TSUNAMI TSU0137 - 73'
Coinciding in time with Erich Wolfgang Korngold's birthday Centennary, the german label Tsunami recover the original recordings of some of his film scores, through editions sufficiently cared on his sound aspect (logically with a dependance on the year of the recording) and documentary. From the very long score (close to 106 minutes of music) which Korngold composed for The Sea Hawk (1940), there was already an excellent modern version produced by his son George in 1987 with the Utah Symphony Orchestra conducted by Varujan Kojian [Varése Sarabande VCD47304], who besides a terrific sound included a brief song (later arranged by his author for middle voice and piano, and renamed as Alt-Spanisch op.38 nº3), and the film's original ending. Basically these are the two items which left from Tsunami's new edition, which on the other side has close to thirty more minutes than Varése's. To this bigger duration we must add the excellent pulse and verve showed, as conductor, by Korngold himself, which offered the correct grade of passion required for his music; on the Varése record side there is the production of his son George, all of a guarantee, so at the end both recordings round off and complete the other.
The Constant Nymph TSUNAMI TSU0138 - 55'
The Constant Nymph (1943) is another different thing. A score of which we only have available some fragments on record, Tsunami's edition comes to fill a very important gap. Basically another melodrama of the ones filmed by Warner Bros on that time, with its loves and unloves, the scarce success of the film bury one of Korngold's more unboundly romantic works, generated around a brief four-note motif heared at the very beginning of the score. This motif will serve, also, as the base for the mini-symphonic poem for feminine voice and orchestra Tomorrow (around six minutes), which the composer will include on his catalogue as op.33, showed in Tsunami's edition on three different versions: a first one with chamber orchestra, the complete one heared at the end of the movie, and a alternative reduced one which was never used on the final cut of the film. Next to that, three curious cues of source music from Strauss, Haydn and the well-known irish-song Danny Boy (all of them, presumably, on arrangements by Korngold himself), and a brief cue of piano fragments played by the composer, whom on the movie dubbed musically the main character. By the way, Edmund Goulding WAS NOT the Musical Director of the movie, as suggested on the CD, but only the Director of the movie; is easy to discern, once more time, Korngold's terrific level as conductor.
