Symphonic Overture (Sursum Corda), Op. 13: Full Orchestra Conductor Score

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) composed his Symphonic Overture (Sursum Corda), Op. 13 in 1919, at the age of twenty-two and during the same period in which he was orchestrating his opera Die tote Stadt. The Latin title Sursum corda ("Lift up your hearts") comes from the ancient liturgy of the Mass and aptly suggests the work's trajectory from turbulent struggle toward an exultant conclusion. Dedicated to Richard Strauss, one of the young Korngold's most important early admirers and artistic influences, the approximately eighteen-minute overture is conceived on a symphonic scale for an exceptionally large orchestra, including divided strings, expanded brass and percussion, two harps, and piano, and represents the culmination of the luxuriant late-Romantic orchestral language Korngold had developed in such earlier works as his Sinfonietta, Op. 5. Sursum Corda received its world premiere on January 24, 1920 in the Großer Saal of the Vienna Musikverein, with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra conducted by Korngold himself. Unlike several of the prodigy-composer's earlier orchestral works, however, it failed to win immediate public acceptance, its dense textures, harmonic complexity, and impassioned rhetoric proving less successful with contemporary audiences. The work nevertheless remained significant to Korngold. After his emigration to the United States and emergence as one of Hollywood's defining symphonic film composers, he reused substantial musical material from Sursum Corda in his Academy Award-winning score for The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), creating a striking connection between his Viennese concert music and the cinematic style for which he later became famous. Today, Symphonic Overture (Sursum Corda), Op. 13 remains one of Korngold's comparatively rarely performed concert works, overshadowed by the Violin Concerto, Die tote Stadt, and increasingly his Symphony in F-sharp, but recordings and the broader revival of Korngold's concert music have brought renewed attention to its formidable orchestration, Straussian sweep, and importance as a bridge between the composer's youthful Viennese masterpieces and the richly symphonic language of his later Hollywood scores. Instrumentation: 3(3rd dPicc).2+1(EH).3+1(BCl).2+1(CBsn): 4.3+1(BsTpt).3.1: Timp.Perc(2): Hp(4).Pno: Str (9.4-4.3-3.3-3.8 in set). Reprint edition.