Guido Bardi, the son of the Duke of Florence, kneels before Bianca, the wife of the rich merchant Simone, and holds her hands. Simone, who has returned early from a business trip, then enters the room. The very beginning of Alexander Zemlinsky's one-act opera "A Florentine Tragedy", based on Oscar Wilde's play of the same name in the German translation by Max Meyerfeld, presents the conflict from which the tragedy arises. This stage work by the Austrian composer, who was forgotten for many decades, had its world premiere on January 30, 1917, in Stuttgart and was not performed again until 1977. This CD from BR-KLASSIK documents the Munich premiere on November 27, 2022, with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester conducted by Patrick Hahn, recorded live at the city’s Prinzregententheater.

With the "Florentine Tragedy", albeit rather belatedly, Zemlinsky followed the fashion for Renaissance and one-act works at the turn of the century. Richard Strauss had made his mark in that genre with "Salome" and "Elektra" – and the literary basis for the former had also been provided by Oscar Wilde. In the very first notes, seemingly aware of this similarity with Strauss’s work, Zemlinsky goes on the offensive with an "upbeat fanfare" – as the prelude to an orchestral introduction that can easily be interpreted as a musical representation of the main romantic relationship. At the transition to the actual stage action, however, Zemlinsky switches to a somber minor-key atmosphere. When Simone appears, the music already makes it clear that the plot cannot end otherwise than tragically. For whom, we do not yet know…

In the Munich premiere of Zemlinsky's "A Florentine Tragedy", Rachael Wilson (mezzo-soprano) sang the part of Bianca, Benjamin Bruns (tenor) was Prince Guido Bardi, and Christopher Maltman (baritone) portrayed the merchant Simone. The Münchner Rundfunkorchester performed under the young conductor Patrick Hahn. Last year, the 27-year-old Austrian – who since 2021 in Wuppertal has been the youngest Generalmusikdirektor in the German-speaking world – was engaged as the Münchner Rundfunkorchester’s Principal Guest Conductor.

Three Vienna-born composers and four elective Viennese performers come together in four challenging and deeply layered compositions that span 120 years of Viennese musical history. The significance and impact of the works, however, radiate far beyond Vienna itself. At the same time, the live recording also reflects a moment in contemporary history, as the concert, originally planned to take place before a live audience, eventually took place on 17 May, 2021 solely as a streaming event at Vienna's Arnold Schoenberg Center, due to the restrictions enforced by the COVID 19 pandemic. The title of this recording, Viennese Transfigurations, is ambiguous. Three pieces are arrangements of earlier compositions for a quartet with the rather unusual line-up of violin, piano, clarinet and double bass, while the other was written for a trio of clarinet, violin and piano. Two arrangements are by the composers themselves, and two are by violinist Maxim Brilinsky. Each of the works has the facility to arouse the curiosity of the listeners right from the beginning, and all end softly.

This new release from The Caladium Trio features Trios by Camille Saint-Saëns, Walter Piston, and Alexander Zemlinsky.

Violinist Lin He is now serving as the Associate Professor of Violin at the Louisiana State University School of Music and the Associate Concertmaster of the Baton Rouge Symphony. During the summer, he teaches at the Sewanee Summer Music Festival, InterHarmony International Summer Music Festival, Montecito International Music Festival and BayView Music Festival.

Daniel Cassin has enjoyed a rewarding and varied career as teacher, performer and producer. As cellist of the Valcour String Quartet, Mr. Cassin has performed in numerous concerts, competitions, master classes and educational programs. He is currently serving as Associate Principal Cellist of the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, where he has been a member since 1982.

Constance Carroll has received acclaim throughout the nation for her performances as a recitalist, chamber musician, and orchestral soloist. The featured artist at conventions of the state Music Teachers Associations of many states across America, she has also given lecture recitals at the national MTNA conventions in Houston, and most recently, in Kansas City. Equally adept as a teacher and lecturer, she numbers among her students winners of local and regional competitions, and has presented recitals, master classes and lectures at numerous universities and colleges throughout the country

Alexander Zemlinsky composed his Lyric Symphony op. 18 for soprano, baritone and orchestra during his time as musical director of the New German Theatre in Prague, where he had moved in 1911 from Vienna. It was generally regarded as his corresponding equivalent to Mahler’s Lied von der Erde (C210021) and is based on Nobel Prize laureate and most important representative of modern Indian literature Rabindranath Tagore. The work is combined with the befriended and three years older ‘phantasmogorist’ Franz Schreker’s Prelude to a Drama, which is a version of the overture of his Die Gezeichneten. It might be considered symptomatic for the most notable characteristic of Schreker’s music: the dominance of chordal sounds over the melodic element.

REVIEW:

Zemlinsky’s seven-movement Lyric Symphony lays claim to being his best-known work and is certainly the only one to attract a significant number of prominent conductors. This live account from Vienna in 1989 was Gielen’s second recording of the work, and it finds him in prime form. He leads a powerful orchestral reading that is all the more impressive because Vienna’s proficient Radio Symphony was the last orchestra I expected to be virtuosic. Every section is totally committed to the score’s voluptuous passions, however, and the recorded sound from Austrian Radio is wonderfully clear and vivid, no small achievement where Zemlinsky’s dense orchestration is concerned.

In the soprano part the choice has typically been big, dramatic voices on the order of Deborah Voigt and Alessandra Marc. Karen Armstrong can’t compete in that league, and wisely she doesn’t try to. By not pushing her voice, singing the chromatic lines accurately, and paying attention to the verse, she delivers a more than respectable performance. But realistically neither singer has the most beautiful or distinctive voice. Orfeo supplies no texts or translations, which means that this recording can only be supplementary to one that does. There are enough drawbacks, despite Gielen’s outstanding conducting, to place this release somewhere in the middle of the pack.

The pairing of Franz Schreker’s 20-minute Prelude to a Drama from 1914 isn’t a new addition to Gielen’s discography, since it also served as the filler to his Mahler Fourth Symphony. The Prelude is rich in themes and incidents, and so skillfully structured that it can be analyzed as a sonata movement. Schreker was a colorist, as he described himself: “I am a sound artist, a phantasmagorist of sound, a sound-aesthete, and there’s not a trace of melody in me.”

The music is lovely, and Gielen’s performance glows with ardent feeling, not a mode I associate with him.

For me the evocation of history hangs heavily over this release, but it holds considerable musical rewards, too, especially for aficionados of an aesthetic doomed to be wiped out through political denunciation.

-- Fanfare (Huntley Dent)

This selection of Posthumous Songs covers the period 1889-1909, with one song from 1933. Here one senses Zemlinsky's earliest development and years of musical study, as he tests his skills on some of the finest German poets. That he was fully up to the task is immediately evident upon listening. The American baritone, Steven Kimbrough, studied at the University of Birmingham, Alabama, and at Princeton Theological Seminary (graduated in 1962). He had further studies in Italy. Kimbrough is well known as a recital and concert singer through many appearances at New York's Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and with symphonies in the USA and abroad. He is the foremost interpreter of the "turn-of-the-century" school of Viennese composers (most of whom were effaced by Hitler's Third Reich), as is demonstrated by his many highly praised recordings. He has presented in the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and elsewhere a recital of their songs under the title "Forbidden Composers."

The ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, headed by Cornelius Meister, presents Alexander Zemlinsky's "The Mermaid". Zemlinsky's "The Mermaid" is a rougher orchestral painting, created in the spirit of Jugendstil, according to the romantic fairy tale of Hans Christian Andersen. Teresa Vogl and orchestral director Christoph Becher listen carefully: the glittering colors of the waves, the longing of the enchanted mermaid after a solid ground under her feet, the perfidious suggestion of the water witch, the splendid wedding at the court. It is true that the marriage of the prince and the mermaid is of limited duration, but Zemlinsky gives the listeners a harmonious finale - just as it is for a fairy tale.

Alexander Zemlinsky’s four numbered string quartets span some four decades, moving from the conservatism of his Brahms-inspired youth to the experimental works of his mature years. Written just after the Lyric Symphony (Naxos 8.572048), the Third Quartet is constructed in a cool, austere language far removed from the emotional, expressionistic atmosphere of the Second Quartet. The Fourth Quartet, written in memory of Alban Berg, is a fitting conclusion to an important body of work bridging the Romantic world of the nineteenth century to the modern age of the twentieth. Quartets Nos 1 and 2 will follow on Naxos 8.573088.

This is the second disc in Antony Beaumont's Zemlinsky survey. The first was released to excellent critical accaim. Beaumont is a world authority on Zemlinsky, whose previous interpretations of the composer's works have been universally admired for their authenticity and sheer musicality. Gramophone noted: 'No one has studied these scores with more sympathy thant Antony Beaumont..' Recorded in: Dvorák Hall, Rudolfinum, Prague 12-14 and 22 & 23 March 2003 Producer(s) Ralph Couzens Sound Engineer(s) Oldrich Slezák