An unusual cinematic coupling in Singapore: Korngold and Richard Strauss

The opening concert for the Singapore Symphony Orchestra’s 2025-26 season played like a proverbial game of two halves. Beginning with Wolfgang Erich Korngold’s popular Violin Concerto in D major, the soloist was young Swedish violinist Daniel Lozakovich. He possesses an artistry that is distant from a fire-breathing virtuosity which smacks the listener in the face and into submission. Instead his intimate and subtle manner coaxes one into more careful listening.

This suited well the concerto’s extremely lyrical nature, premiered and recorded by the great Jascha Heifetz. Its melodies were drawn from four of Korngold’s Hollywood film scores, Another Dawn (1937) and Juarez (1939) for the first movement, Anthony Adverse (1936) in the central slow movement and The Prince and the Pauper (1937) for the swashbuckling finale. These movies have been more or less forgotten, and the concerto is how most listeners will remember them by.

One longed for a heart-on-sleeve approach, given the gushing and sumptuous music. However, Lozakovich kept these at arm’s length and there were moments in the outer movements where he risked being overwhelmed. There were no worries in the Romance where his refined and sweet tone clearly shone. As if to make up for earlier reticence, his no-holds-barred encore of the Fuga from Bach’s Violin Sonata no.1 in G minor (BWV.1001) showed where sympathies truly lay.

The cinematic thread continued into Richard Strauss’ tone poem Eine Alpensinfonie, a performance accompanied by some 400 photographic stills by German photographer and film-maker Tobias Melle. A professional cellist himself, Melle is well-known for his Symphony in Images projects, which marry classical music with photography.

An Alpine Symphony In Images dates from 2003 and incorporates his views of the Bavarian Alps near Berchtesgaden. The hall was cloaked in darkness for the opening of this dawn-to-dusk trek through the mountains. The silvery moon, a bare glimpse of sunshine creeping over the crags, and gradually emerging panoramas defined the transition from night to dawn (Nacht / Sonnenaufgang). The rapt opening and early climax, while not as memorable or famous as the corresponding sequence in Also sprach Zarathustra, unfolded magisterially and without fuss.

The music’s narrative followed a group of mountaineers from their ascent, through a rugged terrain of woods, waterfalls, meadows (with cow-bells aplenty) and glaciers, on their arduous way to the summit. The climb (Der Anstieg) was enhanced by excellent offstage brass, later joining the onstage assemblage for the journey. Strauss’ vivid orchestration ensured the programmatic sequence of events could easily be followed, including the risks and trepidations (Gefahrvolle Augenblicke) encountered before reaching the summit (Auf dem Gipfel) for the work’s biggest climax. Hans Graf’s taut direction also prevented the spectacle from descending into bombast and self-indulgence. The subsequent thunderstorm (Gewitter und Sturm), safe descent (Abstieg) and sunset with a return to darkness (Ausklang / Nacht) was no less enthralling. The orchestra responded magnificently all through the 50-minute course, which seemed shorter than imagined.

The visuals remain timeless, whether recorded during Richard Strauss’ lifetime (1864-1949) or in the 21st century. Drone technology has advanced so rapidly over the last decade that a rebooted Alpine Symphony In Film could well be considered some time in the near future.