Film Fantasia
Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957)
Violin Concerto in D major Op.35 (1947)
Elena Kats-Chernin (b.1957)
Fantasie im Wintergarten – Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (2023?)
John Williams (b.1932)
Schindler’s List – Theme (1993)
Emily Sun (violin)
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra/Johannes Fritzsch (Korngold)
Adeleide Symphony Orchestra/Benjamin Northey (Kats-Chernin)
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Benjamin Northey (Williams)
rec. live, 2023/24, Federation Concert Hall Hobart Australia (Korngold), Adelaide Town Hall Australia (Kats-Chernin), Arts Centre, Melbourne, Hamer Hall Australia (Williams)
ABC Classic ABCL0102 [61]
This disc is the concerto debut of Emily Sun. Hiding behind a rather uninspiring if not just misleading title “Film Fantasia” lie two very accomplished performances of two fine violin concerti including the important premiere recording of Elena Kats-Chernin’s enjoyable and substantial work written with Sun in mind. Misleading because the CD cover states that “Emily Sun celebrates the violin as star of the silver screen” while the disc title suggests to me at first glance some kind of sacchariney Disneyesque cover versions of film themes. The truth is the Korngold Concerto which draws its thematic material from his cinematic work was in no way intended to be a narrative or representative piece. Korngold’s strength in his film scores was that he wrote them with the same fastidious musical and expressive attention he did his concert works. The Kats-Chernin concerto is titled Fantasia im Wintergarten after a 1920’s German silent movie. But again it is not intended as a score for that movie but rather is work inspired by the emotional arc and characters of the film. Adding an actual film theme as a kind of cherry on the cake might seem like a neat piece of programming – especially when it is as memorable as the haunting theme from Schindler’s List is – but for me the result dilutes the coherence of the disc as a whole. Perhaps this is a programme for the streaming age where listeners can choose the part of the whole that appeals to them. I personally still prefer an intelligently planned sequence of works which mutually benefit each other.
Putting that gripe to one side Sun is a fine and accomplished player. These are three performances, all live with different orchestras, venues and two conductors, that show she has a secure technique and big musical personality. One quick thing to say about the ‘live’ provenance – the audiences are remarkably inaudible throughout but the two concerti are received with enthusiastic applause. From its 1947 premiere the Korngold concerto suffered the best part of four decades of indifference at best and lazy scorn at worst. Famously written for Heifetz – whose 1953 recording on RCA with Alfred Wallenstein and the Los Angeles PO remains the version against which any performance must still be judged – the work languished barely played or known. But since Itzhak Perlman’s 1981 recording with Previn for EMI [Ulf Hoelscher’s fine 1974 version remained a ‘specialist interest’ recording] it has experienced a renaissance unlike any other 20th Century violin concerto. To the point where most modern soloists will consider having the work in their repertoire simply because of its popularity. A quick look in the catalogue reveals dozens of versions from the very finest players.
So clearly Emily Sun and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra under Johannes Fritzsch face stern competition. The playing is very good although I am not sure any player – although Gil Shaham and James Ehnes are superb too – finds the nonchalant expressive rubato that Heifetz produced with effortless ease. All players perform the work with varying degrees of this rhythmic freedom but many sound more effortful or self-conscious in its application than the very best. This is not a question of technical execution simply one of ‘feel’. In the first movement I did think that Sun’s rubato was not wholly ‘organic’ and part of the issue in this performance is the actual engineering. Soloist and orchestra are placed rather close to the microphones in what sounds like a very expansive space. So there is plenty of detail but in a fractionally cramped acoustic. Another live version that is genuinely excellent is from Benjamin Schmid with Seiji Ozawa and the Vienna PO. Schmid is one of my very favourite violinists and this live 2004 Großes Festspielhaus performance is excellent – the players are set further back into the hall and as a whole the performance while impassioned and highly Romantic is also more relaxed. By stopwatch alone there is little difference (Heifetz is easily faster than either but sounds the most relaxed of all!) but hard not to hear Schmid and the VPO as more naturally immersed in the spirit of the work. That said anyone who is encountering this intoxicating and impassioned work for the first time will find much to enjoy here and will have few if any complaints performance-wise either.
The real value and interest in this disc lies with the world premiere recording of Elena Kats-Chernin concerto. All the more so since this was written with the playing and musical personality of Emily Sun in mind. The concerto is in the traditional three movements form running to almost exactly half an hour in length. The Wintergarten of the title refers to Berlin’s fairground/circus venue of that name that still exists and the movie tells a story of love and betrayal. Kats-Chernin contributes a liner note and she describes the work thus; “For this concerto, I felt that I could build upon such contrasting themes as light and shadow, tango and chaos, showy or surreal atmosphere, yearning, lyrical or foreboding [creating] a great vehicle to showcase virtuosity, and edgy sounds, as well as heartbreakingly poetic suspended lines”. The liner also mentions that Sun is due to give the UK premiere with the BBC NOW although I am not sure if that performance has now occurred at the time of writing this in April 2025. In the UK Kats-Chernin’s name is still little known and her music under-appreciated. However, the use of an excerpt from her Wild Swans Ballet for the TV adverts of a major British bank ensures her music will be known by sound if not name. I have to say I have enjoyed all of Kats-Chernin’s work that I have encountered. She has an accessible yet distinctive and lucid musical voice – this concerto and Wild Swans are clearly the work of the same hand. She writes in a post-Modernist manner but her music avoids easy/lazy compartmentalism so there are elements of popular culture and dance, echoes of minimalism but without rigorous (tedious?) repetition.
Her use of a full modern orchestra is very precisely handled with textures kept light and clear but with interesting combinations and timbres exploited to the full. The liner description above mentions tango and this is certainly a recurringly present musical gesture with the violinist the main protagonist in this sensual dance. Perhaps there are little Piazzolla-esque echoes here too – certainly the influence feels more like new tango rather than traditional. But this is more a question of when Piazzolla himself moved into the cabaret/nightclub style rather than the high drama of his solo violin writing.
The work opens with an explicit tango motif played by the solo violin and this is used as a binding figure as it recurs towards the end of the work too. Technically the recording here seems more successful with Sun and indeed the entire orchestra played more backwardly in a neutral acoustic. Clearly Kats-Chernin is not aiming for the high Romance of Korngold but the result, still slinkily sexy and sensuous, is lighter and airier which surely suits the music. Interestingly Sun plays a 1753 Guadagnini in the Korngold and a 1760 Gagliano for the other two works – it would be interesting to know how she feels the two instruments respond to these quite different works. Dance is a recurring element throughout the concerto, with the central slow movement a rather sultry blues – again Kats-Chernin’s ear for instrumental textures and combinations is very winning here. Sun’s playing of the floating violin line in this movement captivates – poised yet passionate. The finale starts with a gesture that Kats-Chernin calls the “fatal clamation sequence”. Clamation had me scurrying to Google; “an outdated word, primarily used in the early 1500s and last recorded around the mid-1600s. It essentially means an exclamation or a loud cry”. The violin seemingly ignores this by launching into another dance with a “morbid cabaret-style accompaniment”. This has a comically grotesque character that is both intriguing and faintly disquieting. Sun’s playing of this is an ideally balanced combination of playful/virtuosic and lush. The balance between the light and dark slowly seems to dance towards catastrophe before a cadenza allows the music to achieve a minute of reflection and repose before it sinks into silence.
This concerto finds the happy balance between accessibility and attractiveness from the very first encounter, with enough musical interest and complexity to reward repeated and more concentrated listens. What is not clear is if the performance offered here is literally the world premiere – if so it sounds extremely successful not just in terms of playing “all the right notes” but also as a convincing interpretation. Elena Kats-Chernin’s music deserves to be much better known outside of Australia and this concerto proves to be a good place for the curious or uninitiated to start – a complete success.
I would have been very happy for the disc to end there. The inclusion of John Williams’ Schindler’s List theme – beautifully played though it is – seems irrelevant. Would you buy an hour-long disc for a four minute lollipop or would the presence of such a lollipop makes the difference if you were tempted already by Korngold and Kats-Chernin? Surely the answer is no in both instances. If a third work had been considered necessary something like Corigliano’s Chaconne from “The Red Violin” would have been a more logical and valuable/interesting coupling. But to emphasise the positive – Kats-Chernin’s Fantasia im Wintergarten is a genuine discovery and all the more so in a performance as assured and engaging as this.
Nick Barnard
Previous review: Paul R Jackson (October 2024)
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