TSUNAMI TSU0139 79'

After completing The Prince and the Pauper in February of 1937, Korngold gave for definitely closed his cinematographic periplus in Hollywood and returned to Vienna decided to end and premiered Die Kathrin, his fifth opera; but the things had changed definitely in Austria with the unstoppable advance of the nazi symphatizers, and Korngold returned, once again, to United States not to return to Europe in a long time. Planned the premiere of Die Kathrin for March of 1938 with Bruno Walter at the baton, Korngold accepted to compose The Adventures of Robin Hood without much initial enthusiasm, convinced that the action gender was outside of his abilities as musician. The reality explodes in 1938: Germany anexionated Austria, the premiere of Die Kathrin was canceled, his house of Vienna is ransacked, and the debut in May of the film of Michael Curtiz and William Keighley results a sweeping success. Erich Wolfgang will receive his second Oscar by his extraordinary score, and will end by accepting a long contract in exclusive with Warner Bros. The rest is History.
Not so operatic as Anthony Adverse (1936), but more dynamic and brilliant, the score covers three fourths of the movie with its opulent harmonies and the brilliant orchestration by Hugo Friedhofer and Milan Roder, usual collaborators; Korngold, in an act of understandable nostalgia to his beloved Vienna, will include a superb waltz in the scene of the Banquet, but the time urgency which he found himself after accepting the assignment made him, successfully, to attend to one of the works that he had in greater estimates, the in its time misunderstood Sursum Corda, op.13 (1919), to whose energy and contagious rhythmic happiness will indebt much the music of The Adventures of Robin Hood, whose practical whole appears in this record of the reconverted label Tsunami, with an excellent sound given the age of the original recording, in a edition prepared and sequenced by Matthias Grabi.

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