Writer-director Veronika Emily Pohl’s Emerging from the Shadows: Rediscovering the Legacies of Weinberg and Korngold combines elements of her previous picture, Wainwright Does Weill, with the thrill of discovering a lost musical world. It just happens that the two composers at the narrative’s core had a common fight against 20th-century persecution, which makes the universal determination to restore their works to the classical canon make so much sense.
The film may open with the extraordinary music the subjects (a pair of stifled geniuses) left behind, but their scores are the carpet for a personal and musical odyssey of Christopher Nolan proportions. Mieczysław Weinberg was born in Warsaw in 1919 and was attending the music conservatory there when Germany invaded. He fled to Russia. Austria-born Erich Wolfgang Korngold broke at age 11 when his ballet hit big. He would immigrate to the United States of America in the mid-1930s and become the definitive composer of Hollywood’s Golden Age. In 1938, he received an Academy Award for The Adventures of Robin Hood.
“…explores the men and their work through the lens of current global challenges, such as rising antisemitism and the cancellation of artistic dialogue…”
Our avatars into these composers’ lives and symphonic legacies are cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper and conductor Constantine Orbelian during recording sessions with the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra in Lithuania. The documentary aims to highlight Weinberg, who remained in the shadow of popular contemporary composers for decades, whilst Korngold was long dismissed as merely a film composer. Prejudice walking hand in hand with politics often leads to cultural expurgation. Whereas the music is sublime, the gravity comes from the adjacent tale of woe, and the resilience of spirit these composers endured so that their art may survive for all to hear. But Pohl also explores the men and their work through the lens of current global challenges, such as rising antisemitism and the cancellation of artistic dialogue deemed no longer appropriate, culturally relevant, or acceptable.
Emerging from the Shadows: Rediscovering the Legacies of Weinberg and Korngold is more than just another WWII story or another music-centric biography. The deft touch of the professional orchestra players combines with the expert analysis and historical storytelling. Kristina Reiko Cooper and conductor Orbelian’s voices mix with the music, which dances above a layering of visuals from Kaunas’s historic landmarks, explicitly memorializing the city’s 37,000 Jewish inhabitants lost during the Shoah. It’s amazing what endures when we are no more. The triumph of the human soul over the darkness of societal indifference and persecution remains an ongoing struggle for many an artist screaming into a digital void, crying to be heard. Yet, the music of Weinberg and Korngold, having been found sitting dormant in the annals of musical history, catches fire on the strings of Cooper’s cello, and with passion and resistance the mastery of a lost people shines luminous with an eternal glory, littered with the musical fingerprints of the songs of a people who stared horrified at the brink of virtual annihilation.
Emerging from the Shadows: Rediscovering the Legacies of Weinberg and Korngold isn’t merely a picture for those who appreciate fine music. It also serves to showcase yet another rose of success that pushed its way out of the ashes of one of the greatest atrocities humankind has ever perpetuated. Song and story become one as we listen to the emotional resonance through the notes and phrases that stemmed from the hearts of two men bound for death, but now, resurrected in all their compositional majesty.
"…more than just another WWII story or another music-centric biography."
