Tim Ashley 

Korngold: Much Ado About Nothing – review

Korngold's attempts at mock-Renaissance jollity don't work, but elsewhere there's a gathering sense of sadness, writes Tim Ashley
  
  

Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Full of surprises ... Austrian composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold in 1920. Photograph: Imagno/Getty Images Photograph: Imagno/Getty Images

Erich Korngold wrote his incidental music to Shakespeare's comedy for a production in Vienna in 1920. Concert suites derived from the score have surfaced on occasion since, but it was only last year that conductor-teacher John Mauceri opted to perform and record the music complete in its dramatic context with students from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. It's full of surprises. Korngold's attempts at mock-Renaissance jollity don't work, but elsewhere there's a gathering sense of sadness as he becomes increasingly drawn to the Claudio-Hero-Don John scenes rather than the more familiar comic sparring between Beatrice and Benedick. It's beautifully played, though synchronising Shakespeare to Korngold results at times in a slowish delivery of the text. Among the cast, Ari Itkin's very funny Benedick and Daniel Emond's sweet but thick Claudio are particularly outstanding.

 

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