Zemlinsky

When the German troops occupied Austria in 1938, Zemlinsky fled with his wife Louise via Prague to New York, with the short score of Canduales in his luggage. Zemlinsky attached great hopes of producing the piece at the MET but on account of the somewhat delicate bed scene in the second act they dismissed the production. Building a new existence once more remained denied to Zemlinsky. Only half a year after his arrival he suffered a stroke from which he was never fully to recover. For Zemlinsky’s 150th Birthday Anniversary, Capriccio presents a new remastered edition of this legendary first recording from 1996.

“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.

Recordings of Mendelssohn's string quartets had become plentiful by the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty first, but recordings of the German Romantic's string quintets remained relatively rare, so this splendid 2009 Supraphon release of his A major String Quintet, including its original second movement, coupled with his E flat major String Quartet, will be welcomed by the composer's advocates and enthusiasts.

Premiered in the same concert as his brother-in-law Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande 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. stroke.

Oscar Wildes A Florentine Tragedy was written in 1893, but remained a fragment when the author was arrested for sodomy. But the material was in the air, so to speak, and Alexander von Zemlinsky, who may have had Richard Strauss recourse to Wildes Salome in mind and hoped for a similar success with A Florentine Tragedy, finally converted the play into a one-act opera.

Even seventy-five years after his death Alexander von Zemlinsky continues to be overshadowed by his pupil, colleague, friend, and brother-in-law Arnold Schönberg, all because he presumably was not so much a member of the avant-garde. Die Seejungfrau (The Mermaid) is an enigmatic and absolutely fabulous work based on the fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen. First rediscovered in the mid-1970s, it has become one of Zemlinskys most popular works.

The three pieces the Smetana Trio have selected for their new album came into being within the range of a mere four years, yet they represent three different musical universes. Anton Arenskys piano trio evokes the atmosphere of the 19th-century salons, where music was played to delight the gathered bourgeoisie company. The work Alexander Zemlinsky created at the age of 25 marks the accession of the seeking of new sound and harmony. The one-movement trio Sergei Rachmaninoff, a piano virtuoso and composer rolled into one, wrote when he was 19, teems with elegiac nobleness, which would remain the quintessential trait of the future globetrotters music.