Alexander Zemlinsky

[Oliver Fraenzke]

If Zemlinsky is known, he is for his operas. And factually he was a master of the human voice: Some of the arias in "Traumgörge" are so incredibly beautiful and you can really imagine the dreaming.
Last year, I listened to a performance of  in Innsbruck (Orchester der Akademie St. Blasius, Karlheinz Siessl: one of the best orchestras to discover new music!), a partly Mahler-like piece, but then he catches up with something, that will inspire Schönberg later in his early orchestral pieces. Zemlinsky surprises the listener more than once in this piece.

Not to be forgotten: Zemlinsky wrote some really nice chamber music works. I like the early String Quintet and the Trio with clarinet. The Trio was done for a competition, that was led by Brahms: Zemlinsky did the third price. The other two prices went to composers, who are even more unknown than Zemlinsky! Joseph Miroslav Weber did the second price and the winner was Walter Rabl, who published less then 10 works, before he stopped composing (there is a marvellouse symphony and some songs).

[eschiss1]

A few works by JM Weber have also been recorded - a prize-winning string quartet (thanks, Matesic) and a couple of others.

[adriano]

Zemlinsky's "criminal drama" or "social criticism" opera "Der Kreidekreis" is also worth considering. In this (his last) work the composer also uses spoken dialogue, melodram and recitative techniques. His moralistic "theatre" style is near to Kurt Weill's and occasional parodies of music of other composers occur. The work was premiered at the Zurich Opera in 1933 - after a simultaeous German premiere in various cites had been dropped by German culture functionaries. In 2003, the Zurich Opera produced "Der Kreidekreis" again. An excellent cast of singers an actors conbtributed to a considerable success. The conductor was Alan Gilbert. I assisted in this production.
"Der Kreidekreis" ("The Chalk Circle") was a successful theatre play by Klabund, who had specialised in Far East literature. His play was published in the form of a luxury book with lovely coloured illustrations in 1929.
The 1991 recording by Capriccio (conductor Stefan Soltezs) is excellent.