The Sea Hawk Suite

»The Thrill-Swept Story of the Robin Hood of the Seas«: a catchy slogan that was used by Warner Bros. two years after the great success of Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves to promote the movie which is still worshiped as the synonym for the classic pirate swashbuckler today: The Sea Hawk (1940) with Errol Flynn, who sailed under the British flag as »Sea Hawk« Geoffrey Thorpe. The late Viennese master composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold wrote his fourth and last »Schwanzbuchler« score (translation used by the master of the »swashbuckler« himself) for this film, which went on to become his longest and most complex film score in his established exuberant orchestration based upon the influences of Wagner, Mahler, Strauss and Puccini. The popular suite, which is performed in a somewhat shortened version today, does not only offer the Main Title Theme with the famous fanfare, but also parts of the intimate love music for Captain Thorpe and Spanish Doña Maria. In exactly these sections Korngold enables us to hear the sea with surging flutes and swelling harps.