Search - Bo Skovhus, Alexander von Zemlinsky, James Conlon :: Zemlinsky: Lyrische Symphonie

Emotional Atom Bomb

Eric D. Anderson | South Bend, IN United States | 12/21/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I had collected Zemlinsky's operas for some time before I listened to this--his most famous work. It's fame is justified. It's emotional power is astonishing! It's constructed of seven songs, alternating between baritone and soprano soloists. The texts are beautiful poems by the Indian nobel prize winner Rabindranath Tagore on the subject of yearning, love, and the loss of love. For those unused to Zemlinsky's mature style, or the so-called "post romantic" period (it's really the MOST romantic period), the music isn't as neat or complacently pretty as other classical music. It seeths and agonizes--switching back and forth between heartbreaking lyricism and more astringent passages. But for me, that just makes the lyricism more sweet. The first two songs are mostly of the more difficult hue, but the third ("You are the evening cloud"), sends chills down the spine. The fourth ("Speak to me, beloved") is unearthly in it's quiet, unsettled orchestral harmonies, and voluptuous lines for soprano and solo violin. It gives one the feeling of floating high over the earth. But it's the seventh and final song ("Peace, my heart") that makes your heart break. There's a kind of devastating emotional directness and honesty in the music that hits you like a ton of bricks. I couldn't get it out of my mind. Zemlinsky has sometimes been criticized for copying the idea of Mahler's "Das lied von der erda", but the Lyric Symphony really contains some of the composer's most original and creative music. Do we blame Mozart for writing symphonies because Haydn did it first? The performance and recording is superb, and the filler is a good introduction to some of Zemlinsky's lesser known operas. Buy this CD. In Lyric Symphony Zemlinsky does turn "love into memory, and pain into song", just as the seventh song says."