# Less known Viennese composers



## myaskovsky2002 (Oct 3, 2010)

I would like to speak about:

Franz Schreker
Alexander Zemlinsky
Egon Wellesz
Ernst Krenek

I love their music and I bought everything I could by them. Notice that:

- I love opera
- They composed many operas.

What music do you like by them?

Sincerely,

:tiphat:

Martin


----------



## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

Hi, Martin

As I am more of an orchestra geek than an opera buff, I very much admire the orchestral music of these composers. The orchestral interludes from Schreker's operas and his symphonic poems (eg _Der Geburtstag der Infantin_) give me enormous pleasure to listen to. Zemlinsky's symphonies (including the wonderful _Lyric Symphony_) are superb.

Egon Wellesz is often ignored, because his music is quite challenging (especially his later works), but I enjoy them immensely. Happily, all of the symphonies seem to have found their way on to YouTube (not sure what I think about the copyright issue here!) for you to explore.

I have found Krenek's music slightly harder to get along with, as I find the musical language somehow cold and detached for my ears.

I would urge you to seek-out the beautiful music of Franz Schmidt. he wrote one great opera (_Notre Dame_) a superb oratorio _Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln_ (the Book of the Seven Seals) and four magnificent symphonies in the post-Bruckner-Mahler tradition.


----------



## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Franz Schreker's _Prelude to Memnon_ is on my current most frequented list. That is, I consciously choose to sit down and listen to it rather than wait for it to come back around at random. It's an amazing piece that reminds me more of 1960's movie soundtracks than of romanticism. I would almost go so far as to say the sword and sandal epics of Miklós Rózsa, Elmer Bernstein, Toshirô Mayuzumi, etc., took their inspiration from him.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

*Zemlinksy* is the only one I know to any depth, I initially didn't like him but now I love his stuff to the max. He covered such a breadth of styles from early Brahmsian beginnings to stylistic changes that took in everything from what was going on in Russia, aspects of the tonal experimentations done by his friend Schoenberg, to aspects of neo-classicism and jazz & probably much else besides. Like Stravinsky & R. Strauss, he was quite a chameleon in terms of style, but in terms of substance, his music was of a high quality all round.

Besides being Schoenberg's only teacher - Schoenberg said he learnt most of what he knew from Zemlinsky - he was also a noted conductor, esp. of opera, being at the helm of the Kroll (German) Theatre in Prague between the two wars until his exile in the USA due to the rise of Nazism & his music being banned in occupied Europe. Stravinsky said that one of the most memorable opera performances that he'd ever attended was seeing Zemlinsky conduct Mozart in Prague.

Zemlinsky had the chops in many ways, but unfortunately due to the damage done to his reputation by the Nazis, and being exiled and ill in the USA during his final years where there was little or no interest in his music, his name slipped into obscurity until a series of recordings revived his name around the 1980's (esp. Maestro Maazel's account of the _Lyric Symphony_, that really kicked things off and made a huge splash with exposing the world to Zemlinsky's great talents). There were predictions at that time that eventually Zemlinsky would rise like a giant Lazarus as Mahler did in the 1960's with Bernstein's support. This didn't exactly happen, but now a huge amount of his music has been put on disc, there are quite a few recordings of his more well travelled works to chose from now, as well as even some of his more obscure things - eg. an album of piano works on Naxos which is on my to-get list...


----------



## myaskovsky2002 (Oct 3, 2010)

Delicious Manager said:


> Hi, Martin
> 
> As I am more of an orchestra geek than an opera buff, I very much admire the orchestral music of these composers. The orchestral interludes from Schreker's operas and his symphonic poems (eg _Der Geburtstag der Infantin_) give me enormous pleasure to listen to. Zemlinsky's symphonies (including the wonderful _Lyric Symphony_) are superb.
> 
> ...


I love Notre-Dame de Paris...I also love Krenek and Wellesz very much...You can see my little collection here...

I have all Wellesz recordings and 95% of Krenek's

http://www3.bell.net/svp1/


----------

