Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Recognised as a prodigy while still a schoolboy in Vienna — Mahler heard him and pronounced him a genius, Zemlinsky taught him, and his ballet Der Schneemann reached the Court Opera when he was thirteen — Erich Wolfgang Korngold saw Die tote Stadt premiered at twenty-three and saw it produced across Europe within a few seasons. Born in Brno in 1897, he was in Hollywood by the mid-1930s at Max Reinhardt's invitation, and the scores for Captain Blood, Anthony Adverse, The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Sea Hawk include the two Academy Award winners Anthony Adverse and The Adventures of Robin Hood. The annexation of Austria in 1938 turned an American engagement into exile. After the war he returned to the concert forms, with the Violin Concerto written for Bronisław Huberman and first played by Jascha Heifetz, and the Symphony in F sharp. He died in Hollywood in 1957. At fourteen he produced his first orchestral piece, an Overture, and his first operas, Der Ring des Polykrates and Violanta, reached the Vienna opera house soon after. The years between the wars brought the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, written for Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right hand in the war and for whom Ravel also wrote, together with the opera Das Wunder der Heliane, work on completing and orchestrating older operettas, and teaching in theory and conducting at the Vienna Academy of Music. After the annexation of Austria he vowed to set aside concert music until Hitler was defeated, and concentrated on film scores during the war.