Dear all,
I've asked this question a few years ago, and I thought it might be interesting to discuss it again. What composers do you think are emerging and disappearing from concert halls? In other words: is the "Iron Repertoire" really that "iron"? To be frank, I haven't done systematic research into this, but browsing through all the season schedules from the countries within my travel reach (NL, B, D, DK, SE, F, P, ES, IT) I got the impression that particularly composers from the second quarter of the 20th century were less prominent than they once were: Bartók, Stravinsky, Ravel – and certainly that the diversity of their works being played had diminished.
On the other hand, I also have the feeling that we see a small resurgence of national composers that were once firmly in the unsung camp: Stenhammar in Sweden for instance, or Braga Santos in Portugal.
What is your experience? Have you noticed shifts and if so, where?
It would not surprise me if composers from the Stravinsky generation disappeared from the repertoire. They were never popular with the majority of concertgoers and were programmed primarily out of a sense of obligation to program contemporary music (or almost contemporary anyway). That this obligation fades as time goes by while the popularity of the music is still in the basement would explain the phenomenon. Hindemith has disappeared from the repertoire two decades earlier already. And the part of Schoenberg that survives is the part that fits our remit.
Stravinsky certainly hasn't disappeared from concerts over here in the UK. Nor should he - he was a great composer.
I've been looking over the programming of US orchestras for the 2018/19 season and can't really see any trends. Not that I did tallys or a statistical study - but nothing really stand out. Mahler doesn't seem to be as prominent as a few years ago, but all the majors are doing at least one symphony. No Franck d minor in sight. How that lovely old chestnut has vanished is a mystery. Needless to say there's no Bax, Raff, Rubinstein, Balakirev or even Schmidt! On the bright side (at least for me) I will finally get to hear the Elgar 2nd live, with James Judd and the Tucson Symphony. For many of you that probably provokes a yawn - but over here the only Elgar we get are endless repetitions of Enigma, the Cello Concerto, and that's about it.
Even more depressing are the summer festivals which have nothing to look forward to. Same stuff as the regular season. Same tired, over-played, too familiar music. I know that when I hear Beethoven 5th for the 100th time it might be the first for someone else. Have the BBC Proms been announced yet? Maybe there's something on it worth coming back to London.
A movement from Raff 10 was performed by the Mill Valley Philharmonic in California last November though (and a group played the Sinfonietta around that time I think.)
Here at Edition Silvertrust, we track chamber music concerts. And I can tell you that as far as American performing ensembles go, virtually no works by forgotten or unknown composers, unless they are alive and have commissioned a work, are programmed. American ensembles are the least adventurous of all. We do not even get to hear chamber music live by Foote, Chadwick, Cadman Beach, Huss, etc, etc. Fear of the box office rules...., understandable of course.
If it were not for CDs, we would hear nothing but Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Dvorak, Bartok. and Shostakovich. Once again, American groups are the least adventurous. How many times is too many times to record the Beethoven string quartets? Ask the Emerson, they seem to think there is no limit...
With regard to CDs, the Germans lead the way and not only with their own national composers. Hats off to them. The British are not far behind. The rest such as the Dutch (with the exception of the Utrecht), the French, the Scans and the Russians tend to stick to their own national compatriot composers which is still okay since they often record lesser known composers.
I do not think Bartok will disappear from the chamber music repertoire. Personally, I hope Schoenberg does. Interesting as it might be on paper, and I and my friends have waded through his quartets on a few evenings, I do not want to hear what he has to say after 1905 more than once. Did not music come from singing?. Was it not at first meant to be sung? Is that not why most 20th century classical music is dead and pop music rules? Who can sing to Schoenberg's atonal melodies? Who wants to sit down on their sofa and listen to it? Schoenberg was wrong, not everything that could be said by traditional melody was said said by 1910.
Give me the UC composers...As for the 20th century, there are men like Arkady Filippenko (1912-1983) whose music would be appreciated and very successful in the concert hall.
"who can sing Schoenberg's..."
me!!!!!
and of course exception needs always to be made not just for individual concerts but whole groups like the Jupiter, who just played the Martucci quintet yesterday, are playing Glière's 3rd sextet and Eduard Franck's 3rd string quartet soon... (edit: and Balakirev's early(?) octet Op.3, in a concert in April.)
Double-A - do you also live in the US? What gets played here is not a good indicator of what gets performed, period. Orchestras and ensembles, especially lately, are notably unadventurous, and not just with 20th-century music. (And if Hindemith has disappeared, you'd have trouble telling it from Bachtrack, which shows quite a few Hindemith performances just in what's left of the current season.)
"And the part of Schoenberg that survives is the part that fits our remit."
Somehow I think Pierrot Lunaire will survive too, and even Moses und Aron. (Both Pierrot and the violin concerto are being performed - _in the US_ - before this season is out. And A Survivor from Warsaw, together with Miecz. Weinberg's last finished symphony, make for 2/3rds of an interesting concert in Warsaw in late April, too...)
QuoteIt would not surprise me if composers from the Stravinsky generation disappeared from the repertoire. They were never popular with the majority of concertgoers and were programmed primarily out of a sense of obligation to program contemporary music (or almost contemporary anyway). That this obligation fades as time goes by while the popularity of the music is still in the basement would explain the phenomenon. Hindemith has disappeared from the repertoire two decades earlier already. And the part of Schoenberg that survives is the part that fits our remit.
I hardly think so.
Could you elaborate, please, Tom?
Maybe I should add a thing or two: If the Stravinsky generation is losing ground as time goes on this is probably in part natural and right: They are now historical repertoire. When we were young they were (almost) contemporary.
I did not want to say anything about the merit of these composers. I think they deserve respect and admiration. And they--or some of them--will doubtless survive though in a diminished role. What I find more worrisome is actually the lack of successors: In the post Stravinsky generation there are no giants left. One remembers names like Henze, Stockhausen, Boulez, Cage, but nobody was remotely as dominant as Stravinsky or Bartok. This seems to happen the first time since at least Beethoven. And of the present generation I know hardly more names than the composer who wrote a commissioned piece for a local amateur orchestra...
FYI I live in the US now but grew up in Zürich, came over here about in the middle of my life.
I'll reserve judgment on Henze, but as for Stockhausen, Boulez and Cage: why should we regard them as 'giants' anyway? Nobody really wants to listen to them. The true giants have been obscured by the modernist movers and shakers who banned George Lloyd and countless others (I'll pin my colours to the mast and declare GL's 4th Symphony a 20th-century masterpiece). I could go on, but I was listening to Nimrod Borenstein's VC on Chandos earlier and my faith in the continuance of good music has been miraculously restored!
... actually, I could do without what most of what I know of by Stockhausen, Boulez (well, ok, Boulez is fascinating- I could keep a lot of Boulez - "nobody"???), Cage _and_ Lloyd.
(Glad to hear) Messiaen, though!... what orchestration, what harmonies, what sounds!... and a lot of Reich and Feldman...
I agree, Eric. Even some Stockhausen I have enjoyed: Donnerstag aus Licht at Covent Garden was amazing. Act I was hard work and a lot of people left after it. But I remained for Acts II and III, and was glad I did.
I've also enjoyed a lot of Tavener, in fact more the atonal early works than the rather minimalist later ones.
With you 100% on that, Alan (inc. your comment about GL's 4th).
The major Australian concert series for 2018 appear to be populated by mainstream works, with the occasional avant garde piece by a living composer. :(
Is Kats-Chernin (Sydney Symphony, February 28) avant-garde? I didn't think that was her reputation...
Kats-Chernin's music is mostly tonal, though it can get spikey now and again. A lot of her music has a 'light' touch as it were -- she wrote a number of ragtime pieces among others.
Nothing I can think of that's really in this board's pervue though (I know that wasn't the point of the question)
Right, "avant-garde" was specifically what was stated. Indeed a fair amount of modern music I've encountered, especially in concert, in the last ... half of my life really is more "eclectic" and etc. than "avant-garde" in any sense. (There are some exceptions that stand out, and if I may have been mezz-mezz about some of them, I'm -more- negative about the mush. No, mush does not include solid well-crafted music that knows where it's going and has something to say and tells me what it's saying (which can be done in any number of "styles", mush is just mush, like some of the newest-of-the-newest-of-the-new-by-being-a-bit-of-rock-and-a-bit-of-classical (but not necessarily having something to say beyond style) that one sometimes runs into lately (and I try to run away -from-.)
As to American Chamber Music ensembles, yes, the most famous ones are also the most unadventurous, which doesn't surprise me. Still, the Portland Quartet (in Maine) has a nice schedule this year (if your tastes run to Cesar Franck, Walter Piston and Paul Hindemith, as mine do; it's true I don't live anywhere near there as I do the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players.) The Avery Ensemble (https://www.averyensemble.org/current-season) has an intriguing lineup (in the few concerts left this season, works by Reger (2nd piano quartet), Fauré (2nd cello sonata), etc.).) A concert tomorrow in Paso Robles, California will feature chamber works by Cras and Roussel; one on Sunday in San Luis Obispo will feature works by Cras, Roussel, Fauré and Noam Elkies (b.1961) ... (not groups, admittedly.)
As to orchestras, I see no "Bax, Raff, Rubinstein, Balakirev or even Schmidt" on the horizon but there are works by Gipps, Vaughan Williams (Sea Symphony and later Symphony no.6) and Farrenc planned for the next few months (March, April and May, I believe) in Seattle, Los Angeles (VW Symphony 6 in March (https://www.laphil.com/events/performances/132/)), and Dayton (Ohio) (Sea Symphony in April); and New York respectively. Goes as it goes. (See RVW Society Concerts 2018 (https://rvwsociety.com/concerts-2018/) which btw also lists a few performances in Australia, though mostly of The Lark Ascending.)
Quote from: Alan Howe on Friday 23 February 2018, 00:07
I'll reserve judgment on Henze, but as for Stockhausen, Boulez and Cage: why should we regard them as 'giants' anyway? Nobody really wants to listen to them. The true giants have been obscured by the modernist movers and shakers who banned George Lloyd and countless others (I'll pin my colours to the mast and declare GL's 4th Symphony a 20th-century masterpiece). I could go on, but I was listening to Nimrod Borenstein's VC on Chandos earlier and my faith in the continuance of good music has been miraculously restored!
The big difference is that where in previous years various musical traditions could exist (peacefully or not) alongside one another, the modernist obsession with "purity" (and we all know how that panned out politically) manifested itself in an intellectual climate where only one kind of music was ideologically acceptable – see Boulez' notorious proclamation that any music that isn't serialist is "worthless".
Unfortunately, because performance arts are nowadays so dependent upon institutional support for publication, performance and education, such an attitude can do tremendous damage. That damage extends to creating a situation where "art music" becomes something solely comprehensible to the initiated, a purely intellectual experience that makes enjoyment almost suspect. I'm so glad that there seems to be a new generation of composers moving away from that.
seriously? (That practically all of -them- were and are almost always anti- modernists could be coincidence.)
Glad to see some Vaughan Williams being performed but alas not my favorite piece of his Sinfonia Antarctica.
For this discussion I don't care if Henze at al. are giants or not. My point was that they were not considered giants by the establishment the way Stravinsky or Bartok (or Wagner, Brahms, Beethoven) were. Indeed that nobody much younger than Stravinsky has been assigned the role of "giant" by the establishment (both musical and musicological). And I find that interesting (and maybe worrying for the long term survival of classical music though that need not really concern any of us).
Just back-tracking ... re my "avant garde" comment. Apologies for the careless use of the term - and rather careless generalization. We do hear lots of Kats-C., Ross Edwards and Peter Sculthorpe in performance.
That's good, I think; there ought to be a healthy dose of circulation.
As to the "greats" question, I think if we look at contemporary orchestral works, the concert halls have at least partly been replaced by the cinema; if you look for popular orchestral repertoire it is the Michael Giacchinos rather than the Hans Werner Henzes that spring to mind.
The problem with film music, though, is that it's primarily illustrative and so doesn't really work as pure music - after all, it's not designed to. So, a massive film score may be divided up into small chunks - very unsatisfying to listen to.
Some of the postings in this chapter are quite silly. A person, for example, who has no idea about Schoenberg's songs should better look through his song collections! And, even considering his more atonal work for voice, good singers have absolutely no problem with it. He wrote a lot of early, post-Brahms-like of late Romantic cycles wthout opus numbers. Later came the early ones opp. 1-14 (wonderful works), then the magnificently lyric "Book from the Hanging Gardens", op. 15, and last but not least, thr 3 songs op. 48. The 6 Lieder op. 8 and 22 (with orchestra) are also fascinating lyric masterworks. Not to speak about "Gurrelieder"!
Not all film scores, Alan. For example, some of Ibert's cues for "Macbeth" go for 6-8 minutes; and the first part of "Golgotha" is 12 minutes long - and are set up symphonically. That was agreed betwenn the directors and the composers, who both had bolder ideas about the finction of film music.
Film music is the only place I can think of where there actually are "towering giants". For instance, I think it would be fair to characterize John Williams as a "towering giant" of film cinema scores. His scores from the late 1970s / early 1980s (Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters, Superman, etc.), are widely seen as spearheading the revival of the "Golden-Age-Of-Cinema" (1930s-1950s) style of symphonic score. This (often late Romantic in nature) style ended up dominating cinema for a couple decades. (Somewhat outside the Romantic / orchestral realm, I'd also say Hans Zimmer is a "towering giant" with his influence on the modern symphonic-electronic hybrid score, beginning with 1995's "Crimson Tide".)
Film music is not always made for casual listening, as Alan says, though. And I have no idea about it's durability. Generally speaking, most of the film scores of Golden-Age-Of-Cinema composers (eg Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Miklos Rozsa, Bernard Hermann, Franz Waxman, etc.) have largely faded away in the popular mind, after all.
The few exceptions I can think of are where both a film has staying power, *and* the music had a key thematic hook or went beyond pure pictorial. Something like Max Steiner's score to Gone With the Wind comes to mind here -- the "Tara's Theme" portion is fairly well known in popular culture even now. You aren't usually going to hear "themes" in concert halls (the only thing that seems to pop up there regularly from the above Golden Age group is Korngold's Violin Concerto), but a few "big themes" might live on in popular culture regardless. I'm pretty sure we can say this is the fate of, say, the well known leitmotifs of Star Wars.
As far as the future of pure concert hall music goes, though, I honestly have no idea. There are many modern composers, but none really seem to catch the public imagination in the concert hall realm, even if they are also successful in other composition areas. Our local orchestra did play Tan Dun's "Water Concerto" once, but in the popular mind Tan Dun is more associated with the soundtrack of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
Many modern composers there sure are, all vying for their 15 minutes of fame with music that warrants the little attention it's going to get. Didn't music history go down this road some 100 years ago? The feeling was that traditional forms had been written out, that there was nothing new to say. So after 100 years of the musical horror show, there are some contemporary composers who try to write music audiences can relate to but then comes the realization that at their best, they cannot begin to compete with the masters of the 19th c. They are incapable of writing music that captures the minds of the audiences and performers alike. Orchestras are doing so much film music now - accompanying films like in the olden silent movie days. So locally we're getting Star Wars IV, Casablanca, Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter and others. I'm playing an all film music concert in a few weeks - all newer stuff from Batman, Jaws, Star Wars, James Bond. Not the classic scores of the Golden Age. The conductor I know hates the idea. He spent most of his career conducting Italian opera and the European classics, and now he's reduced to playing 2nd rate music to entice audiences and sell some tickets. It's happening everywhere. When I see some of the programming of Beecham's Royal Philharmonic it makes me quite sad. What would he have thought of it all?
If there's anything worse than this trend to movie music, it's another concert type on the rise: Video Games Live in Concert! The millenials love it. Orchestras hate it. The portion of the population that truly appreciates classical has likely always been pretty small. But given the current state of affairs, how much longer before we're extinct?
The portion of the population that truly appreciates classical has likely always been pretty small. But given the current state of affairs, how much longer before we're extinct?
Careful not fall into the trap of treating "classical" music, and its appreciation, as a distinct form with fixed boundaries! "We" are not a separate group of people with a special definable capacity for appreciating a particular form of "music" (whatever that is!). What is widely thought by classical music aficionados to be cacophonous nonsense may eventually become standard concert repertoire. It's happened in the past, and is happening before our very eyes!
Well said. I'm always amazed at the hatred directed at composers such as Philip Glass, Ludovico Einaudi and Yann Tiersen, whereas most people outside of our circle of specialists probably consider it as much "classical music" as they do most of Beethoven.
The other day I was re-reading Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
All the President's Men. It contains a revealing quote:
Quote
"Woodward put on some music. A Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto. Bernstein noted what awful taste Woodward had in classical music."
This observation is part of the way in which Woodward is characterized as a the establishmentarian, in contrast to Bernstein's spiky, rebellious character. Such snobbery directed against Rachmaninoff was so prevalent that Harold Schonberg even felt he had to address it in his
Lives of the Great Composers (although unfortunately, Schonberg sought to somehow remedy it by rather unfairly pointing out Medtner's and Taneyev's shortcomings). That was the 1970s; such condescension towards Rachmaninoff has pretty much evaporated, and I would be amazed if the appreciation of Glass's oeuvre wouldn't evolve in the same way.
Glass seems a more unfortunate and ill-chosen example than Medtner, but (wherever you are,) there ya go. (I don't "hate" PG's music, I just don't care for any example of it I've heard- unlike Steve Reich whose music has over time been able to convince me.)
I'm currently listening to the raucous music of Leonard Bernstein ie West Side Story, On the Waterfront, On the Town. Bernstein prepared concert versions of these fine works for the public and they're performed for classical and pops concerts, an interesting bridge? Bernstein doesn't get the credit he deserves.
In fact, I think Bernstein is a rare case of a composer who does exactly get the credit he deserves. Many of his works are very popular, and he's represented quite well on recordings; but you couldn't say he was over-appreciated either. One might argue over critical appraisals, but even there I don't think Bernstein can post-humously complain, to be honest.
I like both Philip Glass and Steve Reich, but whereas I think Glass is somewhat overrated I think Reich is underrated. I agree with Ilja about Bernstein. Lenny is well represented on disk and in the concert hall - and not just for West Side Story of course. He was a consummate musician and adept at writing in more than one style while making each style also his own: different as they are, West Side Story and the Chichester Psalms could only have been written by Bernstein.
QuoteBernstein doesn't get the credit he deserves
Oh yes, he does! He's never been out of the limelight as conductor or composer since his death in 1990.
But as an author, lecturer, and TV personality he's been lost. When I was a kid in the 50s and 60s, Bernstein's presence on CBS Television in the Omnibus and the Young People's concerts were something to look forward to. That's where I first heard a note of Bruckner, unusual for Bernstein. Granted, there were only three networks in those days, but how many potential listeners did he reach? We could really use someone like him now, but he was one-of-a-kind, and the networks no longer have any use or interest in orchestral programming. PBS rarely runs it either. Does any youngster read his books anymore? The Joy of Music was important to me, as was The Infinite Variety of Music.
Bernstein's music is well represented on disk, and especially this year in concerts. But the music being played is such a narrow amount: Symphonic Dances from WSS is everywhere, but even in non-Centennial years they're pretty popular. The symphonies are getting heard, and of course the film music. Seems like Candide is getting a lot of time, too. But after this year I wonder how much of his music will have real staying power? Chichester Psalms will stay, for sure. I wish Slava! and The Dybbuk would get played more often.
Remember, though: we're talking about the repertoire here, not (for example) Bernstein's other fields of activity.
With the exception of Aaron Copland Bernstein was the only other one to bridge the gap between film and classical. I've never heard his "On the Waterfront" performed but I once heard an evening of Copland including "The Red Pony," the thrill of the evening for me. John Williams is all about film music.
I think what I wanted to say was Bernstein bridged a gap with his material from classical to film to jazz. Others can't day that and it is for this reason he is under appreciated.
As far as film music goes, in the past a few of the late Romantic composers did make some film scores, some of which actually still get replayed from time to time (Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky, and Ralph Vaughan Williams's score of Scott of the Antarctic via the "repackage" in Symphony 7). Others that I know had a finger in both pots include Shostakovich, William Alwyn, and William Walton, although I don't think you hear the film scores played too often from these composers these days. The converse also is true: some "Golden Age" film composers also tried to write more serious concert hall pieces, most of which are also largely forgotten. Though maybe undeservedly so (I remember liking Rozsa's concert works for instance.)
John Williams actually has a couple concert hall pieces! None of them I've heard stuck with me, to be honest.
Korngold's the major exception from this time (of what I remember): he's someone who primarily composed for film, but he also has one established concert hall repertoire piece too (which borrows a fair bit from his film scores, of course).
But I'll add that IMHO a lot of Korngold's concert work -- his pre-film compositions in Austria etc. -- is honestly quite "unsung" in my mind. Die Tote Stadt gets occasionally noticed, but the rest you hardly hear at all. The little bit that I've heard of his other work (particularly his other operas) seems quite attractive to me.
Within Bernstein's time period, I think you are right that he and Copland were the only two that successfully (from a "creating works that are still played today" point of view) had their hands in many pots at once (film, musicals, concert hall pieces, etc.)
Quote from: soundwave106 on Thursday 08 March 2018, 00:46
Korngold's the major exception from this time (of what I remember): he's someone who primarily composed for film, but he also has one established concert hall repertoire piece too (which borrows a fair bit from his film scores, of course).
But I'll add that IMHO a lot of Korngold's concert work -- his pre-film compositions in Austria etc. -- is honestly quite "unsung" in my mind. Die Tote Stadt gets occasionally noticed, but the rest you hardly hear at all. The little bit that I've heard of his other work (particularly his other operas) seems quite attractive to me.
The
Sinfonietta gets a fair bit of exposure these days; not a warhorse by any means, but I've seen at least two performances in the years past. The same goes for the Violin Concerto,
Sursum Corda, and the Symphony in F#, although that is obviously a later work.
If interested Naxos has a film music series available. His Hamlet is quite good as well as The Gadfly.
That film music series, incidentally, was my idea. I had started it on Marco Polo with 4 Honegger CDs in 1987...
I had even furnished the new "film stripe" artwork pattern accompanied by a film still, since the original "re-painted" composer portraits on blue background were simply horrible.
Might have known...!!
Great idea, my friend.
In response to Ilja's original question, I wonder if it might make sense to consider as a separate set of venues the academic stages where sponsored groups perform. I suspect there's predictable turnover of recent composers there, as elsewhere, but also more attempt than one would find in major venues at preserving or promoting unsung music of previous generations. Is there a web resource that focuses on college and university concerts? It might be interesting to sort through a decade or two of those programs to see if any specific composer threads sort themselves out.
There are arts funding agencies, music information centres, performing rights organizations, classical music broadcasters & the recording industry, performing rights organizations, managements of performing organizations, concert artist managers, unions, organizations of composers and performers. In academia, there's music sociology and a field of historical musicology called reception history. Given the extent to which classical music is publically funded, the descriptive statistics related to this issue ought to become available to us, the musical public. Are they?
Individually, sometimes. Collectively, rarely if ever.
Please forgive me but I have to correct the following comments:
"Korngold's the major exception from this time ..... he's someone who primarily composed for film"
In fact, Korngold primarily comosed for the opera house and concert hall; he was only in Hollywood for ten years and wrote just 18 scores.
"But I'll add that IMHO a lot of Korngold's concert work -- his pre-film compositions in Austria etc. -- is honestly quite "unsung" in my mind. Die Tote Stadt gets occasionally noticed, but the rest you hardly hear at all"
Die tote Stadt is now a repertoie opera in Europe. In the past 3 years alone, there have been productions in Warsaw, Vienna, Budapest, Chemnitz, Basel, Kassel, Wermland Oper n Sweden, Nantes (I could go on) and the Canadian premiere occurred in Calgary only last year, while in the next 18 months alone, new productions have been announced for Dresden, Milan, Berlin, Toulouse, Hamburg and even a touring production in the Netherlands! I would not say that it is an opera that is "occasionally noticed". far from it. In late 2018, THREE productions will play almost simulatanously in Germany alone.
The Korngold Violin Concerto is also now a repertoire work with over 60 recordings listed (and two more about to be released this year) and since 2016, over 2000 performances worldwide, making it one of the most popular 20th century violin concertos.
I could add equally impressive statistics for Korngold's chamber works and lieder. Of all the 'suppressed composers' his come-back has been the most impressive. Unsung he is not.
.
Like virtually all sung composers, however, there are works which remain unsung. I'm sure we can all name them, but I hate lists, so I'll leave it at that...
There are also *regions* where a composer remains mostly unsung too. My perspective is a United States one.
The Korngold violin concerto has been "sung" for a while, no question there -- unfortunately I failed to clarify this exception. But from my perspective, that seemed to be it in the States for a long time. I'm glad to hear Die Tote Stadt, some of his chamber works, and others of his other pre-Hollywood music are moving into the "sung" category over in Europe!
Maybe a little bit will sneak over here sometime. :) A quick check on Bachtrack shows a *few* non-Violin Concerto performances also making the rounds as well in the States (a couple performances of Much Ado About Nothing and a performance of the Piano Quintet in Seattle). It is, unfortunately, not quite as extensive as Europe yet, but actually it's more than I expected.
For a more extensive though not complete list of upcoming Korngold performances see also Schott (https://en.schott-music.com/shop/autoren/erich-wolfgang-korngold).