Antony Beaumont’s new critical edition of Alexander Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy will be performed for the first time in Macao on 29 July. Lü Jia conducts the Macao Orchestra in this concert performance.
Today marks the 75th anniversary of the death of Alexander Zemlinsky.
Mahler’s famous remark that his “time will come” was echoed by Schönberg’s assessment of Zemlinsky when he said about him in 1949: “I always firmly believed that he was a great composer and I still believe this. It is possible that his time will come sooner than we think”.
A new production of our critical edition of his one-act opera The Birthday of the Infanta will be premièred on 25 March at the Oper Graz.
“Everything comes to me without effort, technically it all comes very easily & in the end I feel I’ve produced something worthwhile.” writes Alexander Zemlinsky in a letter to Arnold Schönberg on A Florentine Tragedy.
Exactly one hundred years ago, Zemlinsky’s gripping one-act opera was premièred at the Stuttgart State Theatre by Max von Schillings
In 2015 Roland Freisitzer arranged a chamber version of the opera. This chamber version makes do with just 20 instruments (optionally with string sections).
Peter Keuschnig and Ensemble Kontrapunkte will première Alexander Zemlinsky’s Chamber Concerto – after the Trio Op. 3 for clarinet, cello and piano – in Richard Dünser’s arrangement for small orchestra tonight at the Musikverein in Vienna.
“And then, by a lucky accident, I switched on my car radio while driving home. I was so struck by the beauty and opulence of what I heard that I was afraid to turn it off for fear of not learning what the piece was; its loss would have haunted me like the lost chord.”
Read James Conlon’s full text on Alexander Zemlinsky on our MusikSalon.
Currently two productions of Zemlinsky’s one-act opera Der Zwerg are running in Germany: one at the Staatstheater Mainz and one at the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern.
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The Escher String Quartet’s recording of Alexander Zemlinsky’s String Quartets Nos 1 and 2 (we blogged about it earlier this year) has made it to The Guardian’s list of best classical CDs of 2014. Find out more on The Guardian. |
The Australian première of Antony Beaumont’s critical edition of Alexander Zemlinsky’s Die Seejungfrau [The Mermaid] will be performed on 24 July by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under Simone Young. The critical edition contains the “Mer-witch episode”, a rediscovered and up to now unknown scene.
View the full study score.
Antony Beaumont on The Mermaid:
Zemlinsky first envisaged The Mermaid as a through-composed symphony in two movements, each subdivided into two sections. During the process of composition (February 1902–March 1903) he recast the work into three separate movements.
The first of these follows the well-known story by Hans Christian Andersen from a murky opening (‘at the bottom of the sea’) to the moment where the Mermaid rescues the shipwrecked Prince from drowning. The second, in extended ternary form, focuses on a subsidiary scene in Andersen (a ball in the palace of the Mer-king) before moving on to the crucial confrontation between the Mermaid and the Mer-witch. The third depicts the Mermaid transformed into a mortal, her anguish, suicide and transfiguration.
Read the full text online in our Musiklätter 2.
Alexander Zemlinsky: Die Seejungfrau
for orchestra | 45'
Critical edition; arranger: Antony Beaumont (2011)
prem. 24.07.2014, Opera House, Sydney; Sydney SO, cond. Simone Young
Further performances: 25. and 28.07.2014
Andrew Clements of The Guardian has reviewed the Escher String Quartet’s recent recording of Alexander Zemlinsky’s String Quartet No. 2 which has been released on Naxos: “This second disc is as impressive, and includes a superb performance of the Second Quartet, one of Zemlinsky's greatest and most radical achievements.” (Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 12.06.2014)
Read the full review on The Guardian.
On 3 May 1921, Alexander Zemlinsky received the following telegram: “have read your opera the dwarf with great enjoyment cologne is prepared to accept sole rights for world premiere would you be prepared to entrust your work to us Klemperer.” Zemlinsky’s opera in one act (librettist: Georg Klaren), which is based on Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale “The Birthday of the Infanta”, received its world première one year later, on 28 May 1922 in Cologne under Otto Klemperer.
The first reduced version of Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg, arranged by Jan-Benjamin Homolka, will be premiéred on 6 February at the Wilhelma Theater in Stuttgart. Nicholas Kok conducts musicians of the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart.
Andrew
Clements of The Guardian reviews the Escher String Quartet’s recording of Alexander Zemlinsky’s String
Quartets Nos 3
and 4, which has recently been released on
Naxos.
“Alexander Zemlinsky’s four quartets seem underrated. They are among the finest composed in Europe in the first half of the 20th century, but are rarely mentioned in the same breath as those by Zemlinsky’s contemporaries such as Schoenberg and Berg, Janáček and Bartók.”
Find the full review on The Guardian.
Today the Austrian première of Antony Beaumont’s critical
edition of Zemlinsky’s
Die Seejungfrau [The Mermaid] will be performed
by the Wiener Symphoniker under Markus Poschner, the musical director of the Bremer
Philharmoniker and the Theater Bremen. Poschner – filling in for James Conlon – conducts the Wiener
Symphoniker for his first time. The performance will be repeated tomorrow.
The rehearsal at the Wiener Konzerthaus is going great, the première will be something to look forward to!
Die Seejungfrau / The Mermaid (1903)
for orchestra | 45’
4 3 4 3 - 6 3 4 1 - timp, perc(2), hp(2), str
Critical edition by Antony Beaumont (2011)
prem. 7 and 8/6/2013, Konzerthaus, Wien; Wiener Symphoniker, cond. Markus
Poschner
Here in Amsterdam, the final rehearsal of the critical edition of Alexander Zemlinsky’s Die Seejungfrau at the Concertgebouw went well. We are looking forward to today's performance, where Vladimir Jurowski will conduct the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest.
View the full score of the new critical edition of Zemlinsky's Seejungfrau
While the Wien Modern festival is raging here in
Vienna, here’s a quick look at some other performances around the world this
week.
Cornelius Cardew: Autumn 60 at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester
Luciano Berio: Linea for 2 pianos, vibraphone and marimba, performed by musikFabrik in Cologne.
Morton Feldman: Rothko Chapel at the esplanade in Singapore
Alexander Zemlinsky: Der Zwerg continues at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, together with Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges (see videos)
Julian Yu: Philopentatonia at the Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo
You can see a full list of all forthcoming performances in our calendar.
Here’s conductor Edo de Waart talking about Alexander Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony, on the occasion of his performance this spring with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.
 vogus.jpg "Elena Denisova ©vogus")
On the request of Elena Denisova, Franz Hummel has arranged Zemlinsky’s