Korngold: The Sea Hawk / The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex / Captain Blood / The Prince and the Pauper

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (Composer), Andre Previn (Conductor), London Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Orchestra: London Symphony Orchestra
• Conductor: Andre Previn
• Composer: Erich Wolfgang Korngold
• Audio CD (February 12, 2002)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Deutsche Grammophon
• ASIN: B00005UW3Z
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #155,910 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #47 in Music > Classical > Historical Periods > Modern, 20th, & 21st Century > Composers > Korngold, Erich Wolfgang

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars NO POPCORN NEEDED, March 15, 2002

By 

MOVIE MAVEN (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Korngold: The Sea Hawk / The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex / Captain Blood / The Prince and the Pauper (Audio CD)

There have been several recordings of the wonderful film scores written by Erich Korngold. None though is quite as exciting and red-blooded as this recording of four suites from films that starred Errol Flynn, conducted by Andre Previn: "The Sea Hawk," "Captain Blood," "The Private Life of Elizabeth and Essex" and my personal favorite, "The Prince and the Pauper" (the theme from which became the finale of Korngold's Violin Concerto.)

You can absolutely hear the fun the London Symphony is having playing this terrific, swaggering music. Most film music sounds flabby without the movies, themselves, but Korngold's scores can obviously stand alone without cinematic help. Here is a classically oriented CD that actually will put a huge smile on your face.

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars If you want to discover this music DON'T get this CD..., January 25, 2003

By 

Dennis Koga (Vancouver, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Korngold: The Sea Hawk / The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex / Captain Blood / The Prince and the Pauper (Audio CD)

This recording typifies everything that is wrong with the 'classical' market at the moment: Big Name Orchestra (LSO), Big Name Conductor (Previn), Big Name Composer (Korngold), HOT Genre (Classic Film Scores), Premium Price.

What about the performance? You would be excused if you listened to this recording and wondered what all the fuss was about concerning the so-called Golden Age of Film Scores. All the notes are played, all the sections are dutifully laid out and...there is very little in the way of fire, panache, HEART, SPIRIT!!

If you want to see what is missing, find a copy of the recording first released in 1971 as the first in the historic RCA Classic Film Scores Series, 'The Sea Hawk: Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold', performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the late Charles Gerhardt. THIS is swash-buckling, heroic, romantic music that typified screen heroes like Errol Flynn, Bogie, Ronald Colman, and so on. I grew up on these performances and took for granted the vigor, sweep and energy that permeated every moment...over 30 years later as I listened to these limp, curiously uninvolved performances conducted by Andre Previn, I thought how sad it was that this pedestrian kind of performance of truly creative and marvelous music will be considered the 'norm' by some unsuspecting person out there.

There are two recordings of the Gerhardt performances: one has an extended section of 'Sea Hawk' that includes music from a companion LP called 'Captain Blood: Classic Film Scores for Errol Flynn'. Find that one if you can...RCA decided after this initial release of 'Sea Hawk' on CD to do straight transfers of LP contents to CD and so on later issues of this music you lose out on about 15 minutes of absolutely wonderful music for 'Sea Hawk', 'Constant Nymph', and other Korngold classics. Instead of 60+ minutes of great performances, you have to settle for 50...so what? Look for either of these CDs...they are cheaper and they are much, much better than this DGG CD's 'blah' peformances.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Music, but a Mediocre Performance, November 4, 2005

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Korngold: The Sea Hawk / The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex / Captain Blood / The Prince and the Pauper (Audio CD)

Korngold was indubitably one of the greatest film-score composers in the history of cinema if not the singularly greatest one. Both his innovations in the syntactical procedures involved in the production of film music and his highly individual expressiveness have seeped into the work of nearly all the composers in the genre in the generations since. What Korngold did for the art for which he is best remembered may be likened to what Monteverdi did for the opera or what Haydn did for the symphony. It was thus with great enthusiasm that I greeted the release of this album from the preeminent Andre Previn and the equally illustrious LSO.

While it is already granted that what is being played is both brilliantly constructed and enjoyable to listen to, I was disappointed in the playing itself, especially given the reputations of the players. In this recording, the LSO is uncharacteristically lethargic, and their sound is a bit on the bellowing, turgid side, lacking in an articulation adequate enough to highlight the many breathtaking orchestral details which are typical of Korngold's intricate style. I also find it disconcerting that this recording continues the trend of committing to disc only truncated suites of the scores. If we are ever to appreciate these great pieces of music, one must first play them in their entirety. Two-hour tone poems operatic in their scope cannot be done justice when they are turned into fleeting musical interludes.