Houston Symphony's Zemlinsky interpretation praised
The Chronicle's Charles Ward offers praise for the Houston Symphony's performance of The Mermaid by Alexander Zemlinsky:
For a second week in a row, Houston Symphony music director Hans Graf and the orchestra poured their energy into a lavish performance of a major but overlooked work.
The Mermaid by Alexander Zemlinsky opened Thursday's performance of the weekend subscription series program in Jones Hall. The usual Saturday concert was moved forward to accommodate Yom Kippur, but only a few hundred people heard Zemlinsky's voluptuous interpretation of the Hans Christian Anderson tale about a mermaid who tries to take a human lover but is rejected.
Zemlinksy was a noted conductor and teacher — Arnold Schoenberg was a star pupil — but became one of those unfortunate composers whose music and reputation were obscured by the rush of history, in his case the destruction of tonal music that arrived just after the turn of the 20th century. Only in the past couple of decades has his music resurfaced under the urging of a few conductors, including James Conlon and Riccardo Chailly.
But Zemlinsky's influence was so strong that when Schoenberg got the news his teacher had started writing The Mermaid, he began writing his own post-romantic tone poem, Pelleas and Melisande (as the symphony's program notes observe).
Zemlinsky never abandoned tonality, as Schoenberg did so spectacularly. He retained a deep allegiance to the harmonic tradition that had ruled European music for almost three centuries.
It's interesting that Schoenberg is so much more celebrated (especially, if memory serves, by former music director Christophe Eschenbach, who really put the Houston Symphony on the map) than his teacher, who seems more in line with traditional classical music. Is the choice of Zemlinksy merely reflective of the prior interest in Schoenberg, or a departure? I haven't followed the post-Eschenbach symphony, so I really couldn't say.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 09/25/04 11:25 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Previous Entry | Home | Next Entry
ADVERTISING
DISCLAIMER
All content © 2004-09, blogHOUSTON and the respective authors.
blogHOUSTON.net is powered by Nucleus.
Site design and Nucleus customization are by Kevin Whited.