Alexander Zemlinsky

In the early decades of the twentieth century Zemlinsky was a key ?gure in Central European musical life. As a conductor he held a number of prominent posts – at the Carltheater and Volksopera in Vienna, the Deutsches Landestheater in Prague and the pioneering Krollopera in Berlin, where he also became a professor at the academy of music – but he ?ed to the USA in 1938. In Vienna too he was of crucial importance as a teacher to promonent composers like the otherwise self-taught inventor of twelve-tone music Arnold Schoenberg Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Zemlinsky’s extensive opus list includes a total of eight operas, three symphonies – of which the unnumbered Lyrical Symphony with a number of features in common with Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde is today his best known work – four string quartets and a long list of songs and piano works.