May 29 Birthday Composer!

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (Moravian/Austrian, later American, 1897-1957): Violin Concerto, mvt. 1

I was so thrilled when I saw that Korngold had a May birthday! It would not have occurred to me to include him in the challenge, but it should have—though he is not best known for it, he wrote an absolutely ravishing violin concerto. These days he is primarily associated with his film scores for Hollywood, but if this concerto and Korngold's other traditional classical compositions sound to you a little like movie music, you actually have it backwards: Korngold established that sound. Movie music sounds like Korngold, not the other way around.

Live performance by Stefan Jackiw (Careful, the camera work on this made me a little seasick, but it's quite a beautiful performance if you don't watch him too much...)