Maestro of the Movies ; Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Scores Revolutionised Film Music but The

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THE SADDEST letter I have ever set eyes on fell out of a dusty book I was buying in a basement shop off Charing Cross Road. Dated "Hollywood, 5 March 1957" it was written by the wife of a dying composer to a conductor, Mark Lubbock, who had arranged to give a short talk on the BBC on the composer's 60th birthday.

In a tone that veered from ingratiating to embarrassingly obsequious, Luzi Korngold applauded Lubbock's advocacy of her husband's work and showered him with a pile of recordings. "My husband is still not well enough to write himself," she wrote in laborious English, "(but) I thank you in his name, already in advance, for the pleasure we will have in listening to you."

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Maestro of the Movies ; Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Scores Revolutionised Film Music but The

Her husband, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, had once been the most successful composer in movieland and, before that, at the Vienna Opera. But musical fashions flicker faster than old films and Korngold's time had passed; he had six months to live, just long enough to see his reputation ...

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