Composer

It’s Princess Donna Clara’s 18th birthday and she’s getting showered with presents from all sides, but one gift in particular, from the Turkish Sultan, stands out from the crowd: a real-life dwarf! Amidst all the splendour and beauty the misshapen man attracts her special attention, charming her with his singing and fascinating her all the more for seeming to be blissfully unaware of his physical appearance. The dwarf falls madly in love with the princess and is blind to the coquettish game that she is playing. But then he comes face-to-face with his reflection for the first time in his life. Realising the truth of his situation, he falls down dead. Alexander Zemlinsky’s THE DWARF is based on Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale “The Birthday of the Infanta” and received its world premiere in 1922. Following Zemlinsky’s death in 1942 in American exile the work quickly slipped from public awareness, not to be rediscovered until the 1970s. Since then it has been drawing crowds as a subtle, vibrant seismogram of a highly complex and psychological constellation.

Der Zwerg (The Dwarf)

Deutsche Oper Berlin

A chalk circle, a child in the centre. Each child's arm is pulled by a woman who claims to be the mother. "The right mother will have the right strength," says Prince Pao - it will be the one who lets go of her child so as not to tear it apart. By the time Haitang is able to hold her child in her arms again, she has an odyssey of injustice under her belt. Abandoned, sold, mistreated, slandered and convicted of murder, it is nothing short of a miracle that justice unexpectedly receives strong intercession here.

Der Kreidekreis

German Oper am Rhein

It’s always a pleasure when Gil Shaham is in town and he’ll dazzle you with string pyrotechnics in Tchaikovsky’s magnificent Violin Concerto. The gorgeous second movement will stir your heart before the adrenaline rush of the concerto’s finale.
 
Mendelssohn visited Scotland in 1829 and found inspiration for his “Scottish Symphony” in the chapel ruins of Edinburgh’s Holyrood palace as well as the beautiful natural surroundings. The melodies are memorable and you’ll be astonished at Mendelssohn’s ability to evoke the “misty mood” of Scotland. 

EPSG:4326

Matthias Pintscher Welcomes Gil Shaham

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

As an adventurous young lad, the composer Richard Strauss lost his way climbing up one of the Alps. Later, at the height of his compositional powers, he captured that experience in a piece of symphonic music that details eleven hours, dawn to nightfall, of a treacherous climb.  FWSO Principal Guest Conductor Kevin John Edusei will open the concert with Mozart’s Overture to Don Giovanni, which pivots from high melodrama to a more comic tone, and a rarely heard modernist treat by Austrian composer Alexander Zemlinsky.

Mozart and Strauss

Sundance Square

Internationally recognized for their “fearless, yet probingly beautiful” (The Strad) performances, the Grammy Award-winning Parker Quartet has distinguished itself as one of the preeminent ensembles of its generation, dedicated purely to the sound and depth of their music. Inspired performances and exceptional musicianship are hallmarks of the Quartet, having appeared at the world’s most illustrious venues since its founding in 2002.

Parker Quartet

Groton Hill Music Center

As is our custom, the season ends in Det Gule Palæ with beautiful tones.

Summer in the Yellow Palace

The Yellow Mansion

In June 2024, the Oslo Philharmonic, together with chief conductor Klaus Mäkelä and soloist Daniel Lozakovich, will go to some of Europe's most prestigious concert halls.

European Tour Klaus Mäkelä

Wiener Konzerthaus

Cellist Mischa Maisky is one of classical music's biggest stars. Here he plays Antonín Dvořák's famous Cello Concerto. Klaus Mäkelä conducts Alexander von Zemlinsky's orchestral fantasy Die Seejungfrau, based on the fairy tale of The Little Mermaid.

Klaus Mäkelä Mischa Maisky

Oslo Concert Hall

Klaus Mäkelä dirigerer Alexander von Zemlinskys orkesterfantasi Die Seejungfrau, basert på eventyret om Den lille havfrue.

Classical Hour Klaus Mäkelä

James Conlon continues his exploration of Recovered Voices with a rare performance of the Lyric Symphony by Alexander von Zemlinsky, a onetime star of Vienna’s music scene who fled Nazi Germany and died in obscurity in New York. Opera standouts Melody Moore and Lucas Meachem bring the huge emotions of this ambitious score to life. Conlon, who “conducts like a man with Beethoven encoded into his muscle memory” (The Washington Post), takes a romp through Beethoven’s jovial Second Symphony. 

Bso: Beethoven Symphony No. 2

The Music Center at Strathmore

James Conlon continues his exploration of Recovered Voices with a rare performance of the Lyric Symphony by Alexander von Zemlinsky, a onetime star of Vienna’s music scene who fled Nazi Germany and died in obscurity in New York. Opera standouts Melody Moore and Lucas Meachem bring the huge emotions of this ambitious score to life.

Beethoven Symphony No. 2

Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall

The esteemed and popular Alexander String Quartet has enlivened SF Performances seasons for more than three decades, joined by Music Historian-in-Residence Robert Greenberg. Together they explore in music and words some of chamber music’s most intriguing and important composers, their works, lives, and times. Looking back to the early years of the last century, the Quartet and Greenberg will explore the rich history of bright innovation and creation during often dark times.

Alexander String Quartet with Robert Greenberg 5

War Memorial and Performing Arts Center

Join us for an enchanting evening of chamber music as CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra presents its March Chamber Series. 
The program for the evening features a selection of mesmerizing works that promise to transport the audience through a range of emotions and soundscapes. The lineup includes Amanda Harberg's "Lucas’ Garden," Igor Stravinsky's "L’histoire du soldat," and Alexander von Zemlinsky's "Clarinet Trio, Op. 3." These pieces will be brought to life by the exceptional talents of Daniel Gilbert on clarinet, Kiarra Saito-Beckman on violin, Anna Kuo on cello, and Donna Lee on piano.

March Chamber Series

Praxis Fiber Workshop

Under the baton of American conductor JoAnn Falletta, Zemlinksy’s The Mermaid comes to life through music and sand, thanks to the international icon and sand art pioneer Kseniya Simonova. The Ukranian artist’s creation of a work of sand art will be live streamed during the performance.

A Pact Set in Sand

Église catholique Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs

Place des Arts

Rachmaninoff

Civic Center Music Hall

Yes, Zemlinsky’s The Mermaid was inspired by the Hans Christian Anderson fairytale and the music bubbles along with cheer and pathos. But there’s more to the story: Zemlinsky wrote the piece after suffering a heartbreak when his paramour left him for another composer, and the score was thought to be long lost. A pair of British music sleuths tracked down the work, however. The evening concludes with Brahms’ second piano concerto, which he described as a “very small piano concerto with a very small and pretty scherzo.”

Mermaids from Zemlinsky and Brahms

Bass Performance Hall

Violinist Clara-Jumi Kang is an artist "as ready to caress as to attack" (The Strad). In her DSO debut, she takes command in Korngold's gorgeously cinematic concerto. We hear new "feisty, energy-packed" music (The Guardian) by composer Arlene Sierra, and Zemlinsky's programmatic adventure takes us through the fairytale dramas of Hans Christian Andersen's original Little Mermaid. 

Korngold Violin Concerto

Orchestra Hall

Two inventive singers unite at the Scottish Rite Temple to close the 10th Anniversary of Festival of Song: Lauren Snouffer and Rolando Villazón. Lauren Snouffer, one of the most versatile and respected sopranos on the international stage, will open the Santa Fe Opera’s Orfeo as La Musica. We also welcome the production’s Orfeo, legendary tenor and Renaissance man Rolando Villazón, praised the world over as “the most charming of today’s divos” (The Times). Join us for the final Festival of Song and celebrate the voices of these critically acclaimed artists.

10th Anniversary of Festival of Song: Lauren Snouffer and Rolando Villazón

Scottish Rite Temple

The AMFS is thrilled to welcome Matthias Pintscher, the brilliant composer, conductor and incoming Music Director of the Kansas City Symphony to the Benedict Tent stage. Joining him for Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto will be Yunchan Lim, the Van Cliburn winner who triumphed in Aspen last summer with a brilliant recital and has since conquered the world including a sold out run at the NY Philharmonic.

Program and Artist Change: Chamber Symphony: Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto

Aspen Meadows Resort

For decades, conductor James Conlon has championed composers whose names and works had very nearly been eliminated during the Holocaust. Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff had a prolific 30-year career, composing eight symphonies, chamber music, jazz piano pieces, at least one oratorio, and an opera. He was effectively silenced by the Nazi regime and eventually died in a concentration camp. Zemlinsky and Schoenberg were luckier, managing to emigrate to the United States where Schoenberg was celebrated in the Los Angeles of the 1930s and 40s, while Zemlinsky floundered and eventually stopped composing. The dominance of Schoenberg’s atonal style up until the 1970s may well be due in part to the elimination of composers whose work had a connection to Romantic musical traditions. This program unveils a few examples of once-forbidden and forgotten works by composers who could have changed the course of music history.

A Recital: Recovered Voices with James Conlon

Recital: Recovered Voices with James Conlon

A Summer Evening Concert of Clarinet Trios

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Alexander Zemlinsky fell in love with his composition student Alma Schindler, but she rejected him and married Gustav Mahler. Lustspiel Overture’s lush melodies echo those of Brahms, who was a supporter of the young Zemlinsky.
Alma Schindler was an accomplished composer before she gave it up to marry Gustav Mahler. Within a few years, unfulfilled and depressed, she had an affair, which prompted Gustav to take Alma’s musical ambitions more seriously. These five songs were the only works by Alma Mahler to be published in her husband’s lifetime.
Hans Rott and Gustav Mahler were classmates and roommates in late 1870s Vienna but their fortunes diverged soon after, and Rott died in an asylum at age 25. Rott’s one and only completed symphony—receiving its California premiere here—bears many similarities to Mahler’s works, and scholars are only now uncovering Rott’s enormous influence on his celebrated friend.

Mahler's Inner Circle

Lesher Center for the Arts

Mendelssohn's Reformation

Severance Music Center

The Twilight of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire

First Baptist Church of Oklahoma City

Stefan Dohr, who is the solo horn player in the Berlin Philharmonic by day, is Artist-in-Residence at the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra this season, and he is the soloist in the Horn Concerto No. 2, which Strauss wrote late in his life. While many other composers at the time were preoccupied with new sources of musical inspiration, Strauss stuck to the beautiful, late romantic music. The horn has always featured heavily in his works. His father was a very famous – and infamous – horn player who was admired for his fantastic sound. In the manuscript, Strauss dedicated the concerto to his late father, but the dedication was not included in the publication.

Strauss & Brahms

Aalborg Central Waterfront

»Sweet melancholy is the true nature of true love.« This quote by Novalis is an excellent reflection of our relationship with Jonathan Nott: since the turn of the millennium, he held the musical reins together from the podium for 16 years as our Chief Conductor in over 650 always original concerts both in Bamberg and on tour. On his departure, he said somewhat melancholically: »When we all – orchestra and conductor – achieve a result together, then we are influenced by each other. And even if we never see each other again: All the musicians of the Bamberg Symphony  are a part of my life.« Fortunately, he has been returning regularly as a guest ever since – and this year’s programme is the start of a concert series with him over the next few seasons, which will also take us to places that were the centres of the chosen musical period. It once again bears his unmistakably individual and highly dedicated handwriting: After all, the English maestro honed our musical profile for musical modernism particularly intensively and lastingly during his time. Now it’s a concentration on two related works that were premiered together in Vienna 120 years ago – with each of the two composers conducting their own piece: Zemlinsky conducted his orchestral fantasy »The Mermaid« based on the well-known fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. His former student, then brother-in-law and friend Schönberg performed his tone poem »Pelléas et Mélisande«, based on Maeterlinck’s wonderful drama – which Jonathan Nott has long held dear to his heart. There is no doubt, therefore, that he will be a safe guide through these two works, revelling in late Romanticism.

Jonathan Nott

Bamberg Concert Hall

Studiosound

Bavaria Musik Studios

When the Parker Quartet first performed at Carnegie Hall, The New York Times wrote, “Superb string quartets are plentiful ... [but this] performance set the group apart as something extraordinary.” The Grammy Award­–winning quartet’s reputation and musical command have only continued to grow—as has its remarkably broad repertoire that includes both timeless staples and music by today’s boldest artists. Experience a pair of late 19th–century masterworks by Zemlinsky and Brahms, as well as Thomas Adès’s The Four Quarters—a Carnegie Hall commission called “a fascinating, virtuosic, and spectacularly colorful journey ... proof that the string quartet genre is still alive, well, and inspiring brilliant new work” (The Washington Post).

Carnegie Hall

Experience the evocative power of music with "Echoes of Time," a captivating performance by the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus. Under the masterful direction of conductor Sameer Patel, this concert promises to be a profound auditory journey, exploring the intricate interplay between past and present through a carefully curated selection of compositions. The La Jolla Symphony & Chorus, renowned for their artistic excellence and innovative programming, will bring to life a repertoire that resonates with timeless themes and contemporary relevance. Set in the acoustically rich Mandeville Auditorium, the performance will envelop the audience in a sonic tapestry that highlights the ensemble's dynamic range and expressive depth. "Echoes of Time" is an opportunity to witness the convergence of tradition and modernity, as the musicians interpret works that reflect the enduring human spirit and its myriad expressions through time.

Alexander von Zemlinsky

Composer

Events

Upcoming events

Nov 26, 2024 - Jan 15, 2025

Der Kreidekreis · Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Jan 21, 2025

The Twilight of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire · Brightmusic Society of Oklahoma

Jan 30, 2025

Strauss & Brahms · Aalborg Symfoniorkester

Jan 31 - Feb 1, 2025

Jonathan Nott · Bamberger Symphoniker

Feb 7, 2025

Studiosound · Münchner Symphoniker

Past events

1 - 10 Dec, 2024

Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Nov 26, 2024 - Jan 15, 2025

Der Kreidekreis · Deutsche Oper am Rhein

About

Alexander von Zemlinsky hasn't added a bio