If you're into film music and want to know more about composers of the Golden Age of Hollywood, this is a very informative DVD on one of the foremost. Many of todays film composers have learned and borrowed stylistic ideas and orchestral textures from Erich Korngold's romantic sound palette. You get to know what made Korngold tick and how he, like so many other composers through history, struggled to get in sync with contemporary musical taste while still maintaining originality and integrity. What adds extra interest to this DVD biography is the generous amount of live concert clips of Korngold's music, interleaved with the narration, biographer comments and family video clips. If you are an aspiring film composer/orchestrator, these concert clips will give you inspiration to dig deeper into Korngold's work, like the Symphony in F# and the Violin Concerto in D. Despite having had a decade of good years in Hollywood, Korngold ended his days in despair and frustration over not being appreciated when he returned to Europe. He wanted to compose for the big concert halls, but his new carreer attempts never took off. The world of romantic had been shattered by two world wars and his music didn't fall into good soil. If you want to point out someone who has later picked up and shouldered Korngold's musical mantle, it would be John Williams. Korngold's excellent work is still around, though, in crisp sounding re-recordings of the movie classics. A musical legacy well worth studying and preserving.
