TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — From a composer’s return to classical music after a career in Hollywood to a tragic tale of star-crossed lovers, Taiwan’s National Symphony Orchestra will bring both stories to the stage this week.
Under the baton of music director Jun Markl, the orchestra will perform a program featuring works by Austrian composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. The concerts will be held at the National Concert Hall in Taipei on Friday and Kaohsiung’s Weiwuying on Sunday.
The first half will feature violinist Paul Huang (黃俊文) performing Korngold’s “Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35.” The second half will turn to Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” Suites No. 1 and No. 2, based on William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy.
Austrian-born Korngold fled to the US after the Nazis came to power in Europe, where he went on to build a successful career composing music for Hollywood films. He wrote original scores for 18 films, adapting the orchestral sound and romantic style of European classical music for the cinema.
Korngold’s success in Hollywood brought him two Oscars, but his return to concert music after World War II came at a difficult time. The romantic style that had defined his work had fallen out of favor in concert halls, and he died in 1957 believing that his music had been forgotten, according to the Society of Composers & Lyricists and BBC Music.
Korngold’s “Violin Concerto in D major,” which will be featured in this week’s concerts, marked his return to classical music. Markl said the piece may not be among Korngold’s best-known works, but is “one of the most beautiful pieces.” For violinist Huang, the concerto is less a symbol of a difficult era than “a magnificent beginning.”
The program then moves to Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Written in the 1930s, the ballet has become one of the composer’s best-known works and one of the major works of 20th-century classical music.
Prokofiev’s score brings the story’s drama to life through music, moving between the tenderness of the lovers and the conflict surrounding them. Its dramatic force has also allowed individual excerpts to stand on their own, according to Opera North.
