DVDs & Videos

Erich Wolfgang Korngold
A Portrait and Concert

A documentary about the life of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, covering his life as a musical sensation in Europe in the first decades of the 20th century, a film composer during Hollywood's golden age, and other aspects of his career. Includes home movies, photographs, private tapes, and extracts from Korngold’s Warner Brothers films, supplemented with on-camera observations and commentary by Brendan Carroll, Rudy Behlmer, Korngold's daughter-in-law Helen Korngold, archivist Bernd Rachold, arranger John Morgan, conductor William Stromberg, and others. Also included are Korngold's Cello Concerto and Violin Concerto, both conducted by Hugo Wolff, in complete concert performances.

Running Time: 144 Minutes (Color)

"The documentary on Korngold's life is a one-of-a-kind, epoch-defining event!" -- William Flanigan, Film Score Monthly

Music for the Movies:
The Hollywood Sound

Documentary exploring a segment of 1930’s and 40’s Hollywood film scores through composers including Max Steiner ("Gone With the Wind"), Franz Waxman ("Bride of Frankenstein") and Erich Korngold ("The Adventures of Robin Hood"), all of whom came from Europe, and Americans David Raksin ("Laura") and Alfred Newman ("The Hunchback of Notre Dame"). Host and narrator John Mauceri conducts the BBC National Orchestra of Wales against a backdrop of clips from the various movies.

Sony/BMG - Kultur Films Inc.
Video Release Date: 05 December 1995
DVD Release Date: 24 Apr 2007
Running Time: 85 Minutes (Color)

Shadows In Paradise: Hitler's Exiles In Hollywood

Release Date: 30 Sep 2008

Thirty thousand intellectuals and radicals were exiled from Europe by 1939; 80% were Jewish. These dramatic events sent many of the greatest minds of the 20th century into exile in the United States. The abundance of creative intensity in 1920's Berlin - in music, art, theater and film - that glow of aesthetic productivity was extinguished. In some ways, Los Angeles in the 30's and early 40's may be seen as its afterglow...when scores of émigrés, fleeing the upsurge of European fascism, briefly transformed Southern California into one of the capitals of world culture, and profoundly altered the horizons of American music, literature and the arts

Kultur Films Inc.
Running Time: 60 Minutes (color)

Re-released in March 2012 by EuroArts. According to the EuroArts Marketing Manager, the previous release by Kultur was for Region 1-compatible DVD players only, and this new release is for all regions. [Editor's Note: My personal copy of the Kultur release indicates the Region as "All", but I cannot verify Region 1 non-compatibility.]

Website Links: EuroArts / Amazon.com

Die tote Stadt

Angela Denoke, Torsten Kerl, Yuri Batukov. Jan-Latham-Koenig conducts the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra.

Inga Levant's 2001 production of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's famous opera, DIE TOTE STADT, a story of a widowed man's overwhelming obsession for his dead wife who meets a young woman with an uncanny resemblance to her. Through an extended dream sequence he realizes he has been living in the illusory past and resolves to leave Bruges, the Dead City, to start a new life.

Arthaus Musik
Release Date: 21 Jan 2003
Running Time: 145 Minutes (color)

Voices of Our Time - Anne Sofie von Otter
(A Tribute to Korngold)

A profile of the Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie Von Otter at the Theatre Musical de Paris - Chatelet, 2000. With pianist Bengt Forsberg, she pays a warm tribute to Erich Wolfgang Korngold by mixing vocal and chamber works in a programme dedicated exclusively to Korngold's music. Includes spoken commentary by Von Otter and Forsberg, placing the works performed into context for those unfamiliar with the works. Also featured are Ulf Forseberg and Kjell Lysell on violin, Mats Lidstrom on cello, and Nils-Erik Sparf on viola.

TDK
Release Date: 17 Aug 2004
Running Time: 91 Minutes (color)

Hilary Hahn - A Portrait

A musical portrait of Grammy-winning violinist Hilary Hahn traveling around the world and concertizing. Includes personal footage of Hahn backstage at the Philharmonie in Berlin, as well as a tour at the Curtis Institute, a recording session at Abbey Road Studios, and a trip to Hong Kong. Features complete concert performance footage of Mozart (Sonata for violin & piano, K. 301) and Korngold (Violin Concerto, op. 35).

Deutsche Grammophon
Filmed between Dec 2003 and June 2004
Release Date: 13 Feb 2007
Running Time: 58 Minutes (documentary)
49 Minutes (performances) (color)

Die tote Stadt

Vinke, Kringleborn, Genz, Mayer, Marguerre, Oesch, Potente, Yijie, Schulz. Orchestra & Chorus Teatro la Fenice Venizia, Eliahu Inbal, conductor. Pier Luigi Pizzi, direction.

It is unanimously considered Korngold’s operatic masterpiece although he was only 23 years old when he wrote it. He would never be able to repeat the success obtained with this introspective and poignant opera about passion and love.

Director Pier Luigi Pizzi drew inspiration from Georges Rodenbach’s short novel, Bruges – LaMorte, which narrates the bizarre and sinister experience of a man who, having lost his wife, is mesmerized and hypnotized by the atmosphere of the city of Bruges to the point that he believes to recognize his beloved one in a woman met in the streets. He is so obsessed by this incredible event to think that he can bring the past back, but despite the two women’s amazing likeness, the unique sensitivity and the feelings of the wife that he had loved for ten years are gone forever.

Dynamic
Filmed at Teatro la Fenice, Venice, 2009
Release Date: 13 Jul 2011
Running Time: 148 Minutes

Die tote Stadt

James King, Karan Armstrong, William Murray.
Chor und Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin, Heinrich Hollreiser, conductor.
Götz Friedrich, direction.

“If Berlin‘s opera devotees were asked to name the most thrilling, most memorable productions in any of the city‘s three houses during the last twenty-five years, hardly anyone would hesitate to include Götz Friedrich‘s 1983 Deutsche Oper staging of Erich Wolfgang Korngold‘s opera Die tote Stadt on the list. That production – starring Friedrich‘s wife, Karan Armstrong, as Marietta and James King as Paul with breathtakingly beautiful sets by Andreas Reinhardt that captured the gloomy, morbid atmosphere of old Brügge perfectly – is justly considered a legend.” -OPERA NEWS, 2004

Arthaus Musik
Filmed at Deutsche Oper Berlin, 1983
Release Date: 30 Oct 2012
Running Time: 130 Minutes