Symphony in F-sharp minor, op. 40

Korngold finished this symphony in 1952 and dedicated it to the memory of Franklin D. Roosevelt. By then his reputation had been consumed by the film scores he wrote in Hollywood after fleeing Vienna, and no orchestra would take the work: the first performance was a poorly rehearsed Austrian radio broadcast on 17 October 1954 by the Vienna Symphony under Harold Byrns. Korngold died three years later. Dimitri Mitropoulos called it the perfect modern work, but the first concert performance came only on 27 November 1972 in Munich, under Rudolf Kempe, who recorded it at the same time.