Zemlinsky Lyric Symphony Recommendations?

Chailly/Decca.

Gielen/Arte Nova.

I bought the first three recordings that came out (Ferro/BBC, Klee/Berlin RSO, Maazel/Berlin Phil), and one later one (Chailly/Concertgebouw), and the only one I'd really want to live with is the one that you discarded. :

Exactly! Also, avoid the new Chandos. A big disappointment.

Dave Hurwitz

I disagree most strongly. Aside from the (not so minor) advantage that it uses Beaumont's new and cleaned-up edition of the score, I have been increasingly moved by it on repeated hearings both as a performance, and as a recording.

It has a lucidity and instrumental poetry which makes this music sound like Zemlinsky and no-one else (compare Chailly's sense of sub-Rachmaninov). We simply hear more significant orchestral detail than in rival versions. And, unlike the equally beautiful Conlon for EMI, Beaumont's new Chandos version also captures nearly all of Gielen's dramatic momentum on Arte Nova.

Some of this is down to intelligent casting. In his illuminating programme note Beaumont makes a very strong case indeed about the vocal requirements for the two singers: an older, experienced baritone and a young, pure soprano give exactly the contrast to facilitate the psychological turn-around in power between man and woman that Zemlinsky was exploring.

Franz Grundheber here may be a mite unsteady on his vocal pins, but his quarrying of the text is at least as deep as (and ultimately more moving than) Fischer-Dieskau. Turid Karlsen does not have the velvet allure of Soile Isokoski (Conlon) or the character of Soderstrom on an old BBC Carlton Classics CD (with Thomas Allen, also c. Gielen) but she does have the very qualities Beaumont was after to be an effective foil to Grundheber's tragic protagonist.

The complete 'Cymbeline' music (with a 'melodram' setting of 'Fear no more the heat o'the sun' is an added attraction; so if it's depth and the most comprehensive realisation of Zemlinsky's vision you're after, the new Chandos is a viable first choice for repeated hearing.

Having said all of which, I'd concur that for newcomers the Arte Nova c. Gielen makes the most viscerally exciting first impression for this marvellous work; it's not bargain basement in any way.

Sorry, Chris. It's simply a bore; indifferently played, dully recorded, and not particularly well sung

http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/merge.cgi?225

Sorry, I couldn't find an English translation (I'm guessing that's what you really wanted) online.

The poems by Tagore are at
http://www31.brinkster.com/nien/tho_nhac/ the_gardener.htm

(Nos. 5, 7, 30, 29, 48, 51, 61, if I'm not mistaken)

I'm sorry you've missed out so far on appreciating its sterling qualities; but confident you'll find it grows on you with repeated listening, as it has with me. It's not penny-in-the-slot instant-critic three-star stuff, I agree. It won't be winning any Gramophone awards, either, needless to say!

The recording is notably well balanced, though we can also agree the sound is neither flashy nor brilliant.

Not well sung? I've addressed Grundheber's technical fallibility, to be sure - but it is certainly most satisfyingly interpreted. Listen to the way he moulds and varies tonally the three statements of 'Du bist mein Eigen, mein Eigen' in Song 3 - this is musical and verbal imagination of a high order.

As for the playing, maybe you object to those rich Czech wind and brass timbres? I agree they aren't to all tastes, but the players are sensitive listeners as well as instrumentalists; and they play with the kind of sound Zemlinsky had in mind when he wrote the piece after all.

I also warm to the way, to add to what I wrote before, that Beaumont brings out the work's Czech as well as its Austro-German side.

I glad it grew on you; I gave it a chance, and it has not and will not grow on me. I find in it neither the sterling qualities that you attribute to it, nor do I find in you the sterling qualities as a listener that you attribute to yourself. If it salves your vanity to believe that anyone who disagrees with your assessment is only interested in superficial thrills, flash, and brilliance (interesting qualities to associate with this particular work), then more power to you. I'm glad that you enjoy it, I wish you much happiness, and anyone who wants a really fine recording of the Lyric Symphony is much better off with Chailly or Gielen. They can believe you, or they can believe me, and really the results will speak for themselves with each individual listener.

David Hurwitz

Your loss, in the first case. I'm flattered you are sufficiently impressed to think anyone, even myself, might attribute them in the second.

Oh, tut. It's a pity that you have made up your mind not to respond to the Beaumont recording. To someone who knows the piece as well as you do there are at the very least objective features about it which should prove novel and interesting, because of the use of the new edition. There's no call to savage someone who takes time to try and articulate what makes it different from the more obviously 'effective' readings that have been fairly praised elsewhere.

It's ridiculous to think in such generalised, black and white terms when comparing recordings of a work of this order. There's too much in it for there to be a 'definitive' version or versions. To dismiss as you did the new Chandos as 'a bore' and 'dull' in an off-the-cuff, negative one-liner simply won't do - assuming of course you are interested in enlightening readers, rather than simply bludgeoning them.

As someone once said, there is nothing more harmful than an angry

: brilliance (interesting qualities to associate with this particular work), : then more power to you.

Do such beliefs salve *your* vanity?