Zemlinsky

“I just heard your wonderful Sinfonietta: hope this is the beginning of your American success,” wrote Arnold Schönberg to Zemlinsky. But Zemlinsky was already suffering from the effects of a stroke and died alone in New York just a few days later. In his Sinfonietta, Op. 24 (1934) he reused a short theme from the last of his Maeterlinck-Songs, Op. 13 (1913), “Wohin gehst Du?” (Where are you going?), a theme of “self-doubts” and “farewell” from a time when Zemlinsky was beginning to observe growing anti-Jewish sentiments in Vienna. The Maeterlinck-Songs were praised as “the center of his output” by Theodor Adorno, and transport the listener to a mystic world concerned with life, evanescence and death.

Following on from their critically acclaimed albums of Stravinsky, Elgar and Tchaikovsky, the award winning team of Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra turn to Zemlinsky and Schreker. Premiered in 1905, Zemlinsky's Die Seejungfrau (after Hans Christian Andersen) was almost ignored by the reviewers. Considered too conservative for the progressives, and too progressive for the conservatives, Zemlinsky struggled to overcome the negative reviews of this masterpiece and withdrew it in the immediate aftermath of the premiere. Vasily Petrenko for this recording uses the original version of the score which restores the "bei der Meerhexe" episode to the 2nd movement. One of the most progressive of the Viennese composers of this period, Schreker's dance pantomime Der Guburtstag der Infantine (story by Oscar Wilde) was given it's premiere in 1908 and was his first big success.

All things Mozart have been said and done, you’d think. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. On a daily basis new findings are added to the research portfolio, not only with regards to the famous Salzburgian’s life – hasn’t that been dissected to death? – but also about each and every one of his compositions, continuously getting reframed, analyzed and compared. The exegesis of the Mozartverse is a full-time job to many. The works on this recording alone raise a bunch of questions of which several remain unanswered.

'The dreamer! That double of our existence, that chiaroscuro of the thinking being', wrote Gaston Bachelard in 1961. 'The old is dying, the new cannot be born, and in that chiaroscuro, monsters appear', adds Antonio Gramsci. Sandrine Piau has chosen to use these two quotations as an epigraph to her new recording: 'My family and friends know about this obsession that never leaves me completely. The antagonism between light and darkness. The chiaroscuro, the space in between…'

When Antonin Dvorák learned to compose, he did it the old-fashioned way – by composing. Although he had written numerous shorter works earlier, the 20-year-old Bohemian bestowed his Opus 1 on a three-movement String Quintet in A minor for pairs of violins and violas plus cello in 1861. The next year, he turned out his Opus 2, a four-movement String Quartet in A major, and over the next 12 years, he wrote six more string quartets. Through them, the listener can follow Dvorák's progress from a talented amateur with an inexhaustible gift for melody and little feel for form to an almost-ready-for-the-big-time composer who'd learned to tighten his structures and control his gift for melody.

On her PENTATONE debut Reine de coeur, star soprano Hanna-Elisabeth Müller brings the German and French art song traditions together, focusing on song cycles by Robert Schumann, Alexander von Zemlinsky and Francis Poulenc, accompanied by pianist Juliane Ruf. The album presents a highly personal anthology of songs that address love and loss, and the heights and depths of the human soul. While Schumann’s Sechs Gesänge Op. 107 and Sechs Gedichte und Requiem Op. 90 offer the quintessence of the Romantic German Lied, Zemlinsky’s turn-of-the-century Walzer-Gesänge introduce the listener to a later and less well-known chapter in the genre’s history.

The composer of Julietta left seven string quartets that do not, by any means, form a cycle but rather a succession of testimonies stretching from 1920 to 1947. This second volume – the first is on PRAGA 250 205 - juxtaposed the French Quartet (No. 1), a lengthy and luxurious, homage to Debussy and Dvorak, the shortest (No.3) ‘pocket’ Quartet and the Sixth written in the post-war utopia, a fantastic counterpoint of madrigals for strings with astonishing polymelodicism, introduction da camera to last Symphony No. 6 (Symphonic Fantasies, 1951-53), with his earnest, struggling character and high symphonic spirit.

This fine CD is a thoughtful and very generous combination of three late-Romantic pieces: one well known (the Brahms), one less known (the Zemlinsky), and one (the Rabl) that appears to have its first ever recording here. All three pieces are served admirably by this remarkable ensemble, and also by sensitive high-quality engineering. While all three are excellent, I agree with the last reviewer that the Rabl stands out from the other two.

These first complete recordings of the string quartets of Schoenberg, Berg, Webern and Zemlinsky have won numerous international awards and been hailed as landmarks in the discography of 20th-century music. Impeccable ensemble, superbly blended timbre and pure intonation ….This set [Schoenberg, Berg, Webern] is indeed a wonderful achievement (MusicWeb International). Febrile intensity and faultless proportioning of each formal structure [Zemlinsky] (Guardian).