Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) is, in many ways, a remarkable figure. A child prodigy, he composed at the age of 11 a sonata that made a great impression on Gustav Mahler, who then recommended him to Alexander Zemlinsky, an excellent teacher and composer.

Korngold has presented many outstanding works, among which his third opera composed in 1920: Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City) – that gained a long-lasting and worldwide fame.

His String Sextet (1916) is part of the heritage left by Brahms, but features more ironic, virulent and percussive sides that bear more similarities with the world of Janáček, Stravinsky or Prokofiev.

The work’s centre of gravity lies in the second movement, a field of ruins long developed right up to the highly ironical and jubilant sequence of an intermezzo, structured on the codes of Vienna Waltz… The phantasmagoric vitality of the finale reminds us of the German Romantic spirit and of the circus art.