Alexander ZEMLINSKY (1871-1942)
String Quartet No. 1 in A major, Op. 4 (1896) [26:20]
String Quartet No. 2, Op. 15 (1915) [38:18]
Artis Quartett Wien
rec. Concert Hall of the Nimbus Foundation, 15-18 December 1997, Stereo. DDD
NIMBUS NI 5563 [64:48]
It’s good that the Artis’s performances of Zemlinsky’s quartets have now definitively
returned to the catalogues. Water may have flowed under the bridge since their
1997 recordings, not least the Schoenberg Quartet’s survey of all the quartet
music on Chandos CHAN 9772(2), but the Viennese quartet’s performances stand
up remarkably well. They also compare favourably with those of the LaSalle
Quartet who were, in the 1970s, the only viable proponents for these works.
What remains so good about the Artis’s playing is not simply its resilience
of rhythm and the sense of colours it evokes, but the energy it generates
too. This is certainly the case in the A major quartet of 1896, a work that
doesn’t sound very much like the ‘Zemlinsky’ that we may have come to know
from his Expressionist writing. Indeed it’s as well to be reminded that Zemlinsky
wasn’t a native Viennese, and in that he was hardly alone. His father was
a Slovak who had gravitated to the imperial capital, and there remains in
his son’s early music something of that ethos, one which will sound to most
like a Bohemian-cum-Slavic strain. It’s exemplified in the intensity of the
Allegretto’s B section, a characteristic example of his folkloric influence,
but it’s there in the opening movement too. The urgency of this movement comes
as a fine contrast, whilst the finale sounds highly engaging in the Artis’s
hands.
There was a gap of very nearly two decades before Zemlinsky embarked on his
second quartet. There are good biographical reasons why this work is so much
more pronounced in respect of its heightened emotional drama. These principally
concerned the fact that Zemlinsky’s sister, Mathilde, who had married Arnold
Schoenberg in 1901, subsequently had an affair with the young painter, Richard
Gerstl. When Mathilde returned to Schoenberg, principally for the sake of
her children, Gerstl hanged himself. The relationship between Schoenberg and
Zemlinsky took a buffeting and its resonance was strongly active when Zemlinsky
wrote his complex, highly contrapuntal, polyrhythmic, and virtuosic Op.15.
It’s cast in one vast 40 minute movement, though it’s fairly obviously sub-divided
into sections, and Nimbus separately tracks them. It opens with tumultuous
complexity and a palpable sense of dislocation, before moving on to a truly
desolate Andante mosso section which opens with despairing soliloquies,
but also contains more loquacious flurries, and a final thwacking pizzicato
that leads into the ensuing section marked simply ‘Schnell’. This is slithery
and terse though the music does stabilise in the Im selben Tempo passage,
only to relapse into brittle drive, then thins in texture as the slow final
section appears. Thus the work ends quietly, uneasily. It is a deeply serious
quartet, a study in oscillating states of being as well as being splendidly
crafted and superbly maintained throughout its long length.
Once again the Artis responds with full bodied Viennese tone, but also quick-witted
rhythmic spring. Given that they are also well recorded, with finely annotated
notes, the Artis still rank very high in this repertoire and are worthy of
serious consideration.
Jonathan Woolf
See also review
by Gavin Dixon
The Artis still rank very high in this repertoire and are worthy of serious
consideration.