Zemlinsky: Lieder - CD

ENGLISH

<br><br>The rediscovery of the music of Alexander von Zemlinsky over the past 30 years has been one of the great success stories of 20th-century music. A bridge between the Romantic period and what followed, Zemlinsky, along with Korngold and Richard Strauss, exemplifies the alternative musical route post Wagner and Mahler. Although teetering on the edge of tonality, Zemlinsky, like Mahler, took the technical and stylistic achievement of Brahms, Dvorák and Wagner a stage further, adhering to the same principles. His student and firm friend Schoenberg, and the Second Viennese School, adopted the radical 12-tone method. <br /> <br /> This 2CD set contains a substantial number of Zemlinsky’s Lieder, from the early Op.2 set which betray their allegiance to Brahms, up to the late songs from his period of exile in the US in the late 1930s. The Op.27 songs display a growing sense of loss and estrangement. The brittle and bitter energy of these works sounds light years away from the lush late Romanticism of the Op.2 and Op.5 songs. <br /> <br /> The line-up of soloists on this recording is first-rate, and this recording was the world premiere for the early Opp. 2 and 5 songs. For lovers of the late Romantic period, especially the music of Mahler, these songs will have enormous appeal. They stand comparison with those by Strauss and Wolf. <br /> <br /> Other information:<br /> - Recorded in 1989.<br /> - "The casting is, almost without exception, sensitive and revelatory" (Gramophone).<br /> - "Von Otter finds an almost Wolf-like intensity in the aching melodic contours of ‘Und hat der Tag all seine Qual’… [the songs in] this collection (Op.13) are all sung by von Otter who is minutely sensitive to the compressed tonalities supporting the supplest and simplest of lines … the hanging cadences and sense of irresolution … are particularly moving" (Gramophone). <br /> - Includes booklet notes written by Zemlinsky expert Erik Levi.