Alexander Zemlinsky is yet another very interesting composer of fin de siècle Vienna whose profile has risen thanks to recordings. In the compact disc era, as record producers pushed to find a niche beyond the gilded temple of the standard repertoire, opulent late-romantic figures like Zemlinsky began to emerge.
In himself, he was a remarkable talent. He studied theory with Robert Fuchs and composition with Anton Bruckner. Early on, he received support from Johannes Brahms. Later, he met Arnold Schoenberg, who became his pupil and son-in-law. He was also the mentor of the wunderkind Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
He was further helped by Gustav Mahler. Like just about everyone else, he was swept up into a torrid love affair with Alma Schindler, later Frau Mahler. There was even a marriage proposal. Alma seemed to be keen on the idea at first but was soon dissuaded by family and peers.
By his own assessment, Zemlinsky was not an attractive man, and perhaps there was a bit of autobiography in his choice to set Oscar Wilde’s short story “The Birthday of the Infanta” as an opera, which he titled “The Dwarf.” (SPOILER ALERT: The Dwarf is spurned and dies of a broken heart.)
Zemlinsky is probably best known for his “Lyric Symphony,” for vocal soloists and orchestra, on texts of Rabindranath Tagore, and the large-scale symphonic poem “The Mermaid,” after Hans Christian Andersen.
However, I have always been partial to this early Symphony in B-flat, written in the shadow of Brahms and Dvořák. Personally I prefer the Chailly recording, but it doesn’t appear to be posted on YouTube, so I’ll take what I can get:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP51rIgk4ac
Happy birthday, Alexander Zemlinsky!
PHOTO: Zemlinsky smokes the sourest cigar in the world