About this Piece

Long before Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s orchestral film scores defined the sound of Hollywood’s Golden Age, the Austrian composer was the celebrated wunderkind of Vienna at the start of the 20th century. A prodigy of Mozartean proportions, he premiered his first major work at the age of 13, performed for the emperor at 14, and by his 24th birthday enjoyed successful runs of three operas.

But in 1938, at the height of his career, Korngold’s life, and the lives of all Austrian Jews, came under threat as the Third Reich began expanding its fascist empire. With demand for his work already established in Hollywood, Korngold fled Vienna and secured refuge for his family in Los Angeles’ Toluca Lake neighborhood, where he continued producing award-winning film scores for Warner Bros. Pictures in nearby Burbank.

Korngold’s increasingly poor health—as well as seismic changes in the tastes of Viennese audiences, who now belittled his rapturously romantic music—prevented the composer from permanently returning to Austria. But in his final composition, Straussiana, Korngold resurrects youthful memories of his homeland by paying tribute to one of his musical heroes: Johann Strauss II, the “Waltz King” of 19th-century Vienna.

Commissioned by the American School Orchestras Association in 1953, Straussiana was intended for performance by student musicians, yet any orchestra would relish navigating this playful, shimmering score. (In fact, its premiere was performed by a semi-pro orchestra in Inglewood, CA, now home to the LA Phil’s Beckmen YOLA Center.)

In just seven minutes, Korngold weaves together three little-known Strauss dances: a charming polka, a mazurka tinged with melancholy, and an electrifying waltz. But Straussiana is more than a simple rearrangement of these works—rather, Korngold adorns the original dances with the cinematic sweep and kaleidoscopic orchestrations he honed at Warner Bros. From the twinkling bells that ripple through the polka like the bubbles of Austrian sparkling wine to the mazurka’s wistful strings and a waltz that races to its dizzying conclusion, Straussiana evokes the sounds of Korngold’s childhood, the music of Vienna that forever echoed in his mind.

—Michael Cirigliano II