Zemlinsky - Die Seejungfrau

The Guardian 80

Netherlands PO/Albrecht
(Pentatone)
This fine recording of Zemlinsky’s sumptuous late-Romantic work is another reminder of why the composer is unfairly neglected

There have been a number of occasions in the past few decades when it seemed as if the music of Alexander Zemlinsky would finally receive the attention it deserves. As Arnold Schoenberg’s teacher and first brother-in-law, and one of Alma Schindler’s pre-Mahler lovers, Zemlinsky may always get at least a few lines in histories of fin-de-siecle German romanticism, but his own works have been less consistently discussed.

A flurry of interest in the 1980s and 90s resulted in the publication of a definitive life and works and recordings of all of the operas, two of which, the one-acters A Florentine Tragedy and The Dwarf, looked likely for a while to become repertory pieces. But that enthusiasm has since cooled, and outside Germany and Austria none of his music is regularly heard now, not even his best-known score, the Lyric Symphony, nor the sumptuous “fantasy in three movements” Die Seejungfrau (The Mermaid), based upon Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale.