E.W.Korngold Web site

"If ever you needed a musical snapshot of Vienna between the wars, this is it. (Even though the Third Quartet was composed after WWII). The benign shadow of the elderly Brahms occasionally hovers; likewise, the less benign shade of Schoenberg ­ but – don’t worry, the music occasionally strains at tonality but never becomes atonal; and, most of all, there’s the hallmark warm, luscious, late Romantic lyricism of Korngold, Mahler’s true heir. The way he creates a sudden dissonance, a chromatic shadow and ensuing chill is very Viennese, as if reminding us not to just admire the flowers but to remember the dark sinister roots beneath. It’s the equivalent of the moment in Korngold’s film scores when Bette Davis accidentally discovers the love letters in a secret drawer – a sort of musical Freudian slip.

The First Quartet is the most complex, yet beguiling, and the lyrical second subjects and main ideas radiate an almost operatic sensuality and at other times a hymn-like beauty. The Doric Quartet dispatch with insouciance what must be nightmarishly difficult filigree work in the perky intermezzo, while the finale uses Korngold’s musical motto Motiv des fröhlichen Herzens (Motif of the cheerful heart) which he liked to include before bursting into a riotous march. For me, the most cherishable moment in the Second Quartet is the final movement waltz, composed without discernible irony (unlike Ravel’s contemporary La Valse, a symbol of decadence and decay). The Third Quartet is the most distilled and abstract but still highly enjoyable. The Dorics have made this music their own."

Greg Keane
Copyright © Limelight Magazine

At the time of his birth, Brno was called Bruenn and was part of Austria. He never had a Czech passport, never spoke Czech and considered himself Austrian until the day he died. To be more specific, like Mahler, he was from the Moravian school.