A 'Lost' Zemlinsky Concerto Surfaces — As an Arrangement

A violin concerto attributed to Alexander Zemlinsky — Mahler's staff conductor at the Vienna Opera and Schoenberg's brother-in-law — anchors a new album that received a four-star rating from critic Norman Lebrecht. The disc, Violin Concertant XXI, vol 2, appeared on the TyXart label and draws on Lebrecht's Album of the Week column in The Critic.

The work is not a lost original. It is an arrangement for orchestra of a Zemlinsky violin-piano sonata, premiered at last year's Salzburg Festival. Lebrecht, writing with characteristic bite, admitted his appetite for rediscoveries: "Tell me they have found a lost concerto by a cherished composer and I'll be onto it faster than a ferret up a trouser-leg."

What's on the album?

• An orchestral arrangement of Zemlinsky's early violin-piano sonata, dated 1896, premiered at last year's Salzburg Festival
• A concerto "in memoriam Max Reger" by Franz Hümmel, who died in 2022
• A resetting of a Stravinsky neo-classical suite, itself fashioned in 1925 from fragments of the ballet Pulcinella

Elena Denisova plays both concertos, accompanied by the Gustav Mahler Ensemble.

Why does the Zemlinsky matter?

Zemlinsky remains, in Lebrecht's words, "shockingly under-performed," so any glimpse of an esoteric work carries weight. The 1896 score is strongly reminiscent of the Brahms violin concerto — and the connection is biographical. The young Zemlinsky was championed by Brahms himself, and Lebrecht hears the homage as "at once sincere and forward looking, if perhaps a little soft-centred. No matter: I loved every bar of it."

Who is Franz Hümmel?

The album opens with Hümmel's tribute to Max Reger, a composer Lebrecht treats with brisk impatience. "Nothing will persuade me to sit through five minutes of Reger," he wrote, "but Hümmel is a witty composer who constructs an evocative half-hour panorama of Reger's workaholic, alcoholic short life." The concerto opens with what Lebrecht calls a "melancholic grumble typical of the misanthropic palindrome." His verdict: "A concerto with a narrative is always worth attention."

What about the Stravinsky?

The closing item draws the short straw. Lebrecht counts the Stravinsky resetting — already a 1925 reworking of Pulcinella fragments — as one derivation too many: "Too many derivations, for my liking, and no real purpose." Even so, he is unambiguous about the disc's core: "the two supposed 'concertos' are of major interest and I'd urge you to hear them."

The pairing of Denisova and the Gustav Mahler Ensemble left the critic wanting more: "I really want to hear them live." For a composer as neglected as Zemlinsky, a Salzburg premiere and a four-star recording suggest the rehabilitation may finally be gaining momentum.