The Golden Age Of The Silver Screen (Part I) / Janet Sung / Britt Orchestra

This concert opens with a suite from the 1938 Oscar-winning film The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Haviland. Considered by many to be one of the best film scores ever composed, this work may have literally saved its composer's life. Born into a Jewish home, Erich Korngold was called to Hollywood for this project from his native Austro-Hungarian home just before the Anschluss. He ended up becoming a naturalized citizen and staying in the U.S. where he composed dozens of film scores and concert works including the lyrical Violin Concerto on tonight's program. For Korngold, the boundary between film and concert music was fluid, and ideas generated for one medium often made their way into the other. Violinist Janet Sung's performance of this unashamedly romantic concerto has been broadcast nationally and internationally on NPR's Performance Today. Sung is an acclaimed virtuoso soloist praised for her expressive tone and technical mastery. The list of scores by Academy Award-winning composer Bernard Herrmann includes four decades of films such as Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and of course many of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest movies. His collaboration with Hitchcock changed the way we think about film music forever. Who can imagine the shower scene from Psycho without its music? And the spiraling, swirling dissonance in the score for Vertigo keeps the viewer/listener off balance and is key to the emotional impact of the movie. This concert is sure to keep you spellbound! Pre-concert talk at 7 p.m. by special guest Katy Korngold Hubbard, violinist and granddaughter of composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold.