Alexander Zemlinsky's The Mermaid. Fantasy in three movements for large orchestra (Die Seejungfrau. Fantasie in drei Sätzen für großes Orchester) based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, played by the WDR Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Ingo Metzmacher. Recorded live on 13 January 2024 at the Kölner Philharmonie.

Alexander Zemlinsky - The Mermaid. Fantasy in three movements for large orchestra

00:00:00 I. Very moderately moving (Sehr mäßig bewegt)
00:14:45 II. Very moving, rushing (Sehr bewegt, rauschend)
00:27:13 III. very stretched, with painful expression (Sehr gedehnt, mit schmerzvollem Ausdruck)

WDR Symphony Orchestra
Ingo Metzmacher, conductor

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Introduction to the work
"Of course, Schönberg's wife Mathilde was also present at the summer holiday in 1909 - as was her brother: Alexander Zemlinsky. Schönberg had met him in 1895 in the amateur orchestra "Polyhymnia" and then took composition lessons with the composer, who was three years his senior. At first, Schönberg looked up to Zemlinsky, but he learnt quickly. When they both studied the newly published score of Richard Strauss' "Ein Heldenleben", they were equally fascinated and repelled by it.
And yet this work triggers a compositional reflex in both of them:Schönberg sets to work on his symphonic poem "Pelleas and Melisande", and Zemlinsky devotes himself to his fantasy for orchestra "The Mermaid".They compete with each other. At the premiere of both compositions at the same concert on 25 January 1905, Zemlinsky finally felt that his brother-in-law had the edge. The reactions of the audience and critics suggest this. Discouraged, Zemlinsky let his three-part work disappear into a drawer. Or not quite: he later bequeathed the first part to Marie Pappenheim, the librettist of "Erwartung".Zemlinsky took the other two parts with him across the Atlantic when he fled from the National Socialists in 1938. It was not until the early 1980s that researchers realised that the separate scores together formed "Die Seejungfrau"
together. In it, Zemlinsky depicts Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of the Little Mermaid in glowing orchestral colours. He described the stages of his composition in a letter to Schönberg: Part 1 begins audibly "at the bottom of the sea". Embodied by the solo violin, the mermaid appears. She has her fish tail transformed into two human legs by the sea witch.In return, she sacrifices her voice, but is able to emerge into the "human world" appear. In part 2, the surging "storm" can be heard in dazzling colours, as well as "the prince's salvation" by the mermaid.Part 3 describes her "longing", "the prince's marriage" to another, and the end of the mermaid as foam on the crests of the waves."
(Text: Otto Hagedorn)