Zemlinsky: Symphonies Nos. 1 And 2

Description

Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942)Symphony No. 1 in D minor • Symphony No. 2 in B flat majorThe Austrian composer and conductor Alexander von Zemlinsky was born in Vienna in 1871. His reputation has to some extent been overshadowed by the controversial and influential achievements of his brother-in-law Arnold Schoenberg, with Alban Berg and Anton Webern, on the one hand, and by those of his older contemporary Gustav Mahler. Zemlinsky continues the tradition of Viennese classicism, the influence of Wagner never leading him to abandon tonality. In some measure he represents a generation of Viennese composers who were able to combine the apparently divergent tendencies of Brahms and Wagner. Zemlinsky was trained at the Vienna Conservatory, where he was a composition pupil of Johann Nepomuk Fuchs, himself a pupil of Sechter, who had taught Schubert briefly, and of Bruckner, in the intervals of writing his daily fugue. Always a fine craftsman, Zemlinsky was able to instruct Schoenberg, whom he met in the amateur orchestra Polyhymnia in 1895, in counterpoint, and gave him advice on his earlier work. He was to remain for some time a strong influence both on Schoenberg and on younger composers in Vienna. He also taught Alma Schindler, later the wife of Mahler, who in 1897 became conductor at the Court Opera in Vienna. The daughter of a distinguished painter and step-daughter of Karl Moll, founder of the Sezession, she had had an earlier infatuation with Gustav Klimt, followed, when she turned her attention from painting to music, by a curious attraction to her teacher Zemlinsky, a man whom she described as of astonishing ugliness, chinless, toothless and very dirty. Zemlinsky, in his turn, seems to have been fascinated by his pupil. It was at a dinner party that Alma had her first contact with Mahler, when the discussion turned to male beauty. Mahler cited the example of Socrates, the relative ugliness of whose appearance was evidently transformed by the beauty of his mind. In reply Alma suggested Zemlinsky as a man whose intellect gave him beauty in spite of his physical ugliness. An argument arose about a new ballet by Zemlinsky, Der Triumph der Zeit, the production of which at the Court Opera Mahler had up to then opposed. The dispute, heated enough, elicited a promise from Mahler to speak to Zemlinsky on the matter and led, before long, to Mahler’s own marriage. Mahler once advised Berg not to go into the theatre if he wanted to be a composer, a counsel prompted by his own experience. Zemlinsky’s career was essentially in opera. In 1899 he became Kapellmeister at the Carltheater in Vienna, and later conducted also at the Volksoper, where he was Kapellmeister from 1906 until 1911, with a break during Mahler’s last season, 1907-08, when he conducted at the Court Opera. From 1911 until 1927 he was conductor at the Deutsche Landestheater in Prague, where he employed Schoenberg’s pupils Webern, Jalowetz and Karl Horowi