Jessica Duchen -- among many other things, also a distinguished Korngold biographer -- brilliantly argues the case for Erich:
Korngold is not the first composer to be judged by what he wasn't,
rather than what he was. Among others is Schubert, who has never been
forgiven for not being Beethoven; Liszt, who some people seem to think
should have been Chopin; and our darling Mendelssohn, who was in many
ways a better composer than Schumann but committed the double-whammy
error of being born Jewish and subsequently becoming a genuine, not
just expedient, convert to Christianity, thereby rubbing everyone up
the wrong way. Such judgments damage reputations, and quite
unnecessarily: they blind the critic to whatever positive qualities an
artist may be offering on his own terms, qualities which may need the
critic to have enough imagination to accept a different perspective.
Why should Schubert be Beethoven, when Beethoven could never have
written Winterreise?
Jessica also made a podcast about Die Tote Stadt for the ROH here.
When it comes to chronically misunderstood or unjustly forgotten composers, Opera Chic is on the record as a Zemlinsky girl first and foremost, but Korngold's pretty bada$$, too. And Jess is as always spot-on, panning someone (a composer, a musician, a singer) for the crime of not being someone else is an old, unfair, terrible habit of music critics.