Korngold composed incidental music for Shakespeare’s comedy Much ado about nothing in 1918 for the Schlosstheater Company at Schönbrunn. The performance was so successful that it was later staged at the Burgtheater, and when the orchestra’s contract expired Korngold swiftly rewrote his music for violin and piano (with Rudolf Kolisch playing violin and Korngold at the piano) so there was no interruption in the performances. Four movements of the version for violin and piano appeared in print in 1920, and it is this suite version that remains to this day one of Korngold’s most often-played works.
In addition to the four movements of the version for violin and piano, the original incidental music, the orchestral suite, also included an overture. The orchestra consists of a string section without basses, just one of each wind instruments (except the horn), a harp, a harmonium and a piano, as well as a large percussion section. The movement following the brilliantly orchestrated, effervescent music of the overture is evocative of a bridal chamber. The two most amusing characters of the play, Holzapfel (Dogberry) and Schlehwein (Verges) who litters his conversation with pseudo-Latin, gave their name to third movement, a ‘grotesque funeral march’. The Intermezzo (Scene in the Garden) begins with a lyrical cello solo, and the suite ends with a grandiose masquerade, rounded off by a ‘solemnly vivid’ Hornipe.