The work
Few chamber music works convey emotional turbulence with such graphic intensity as Alexander Zemlinsky’s String Quartet No. 2. Written between 1913 and 1915, this epic one-movement composition lays bare all the bitter disappointments he experienced on a personal and professional level after 1900. A doomed love affair with his composition pupil Alma Schindler, who left him to marry Gustav Mahler, had a particularly traumatic impact. But no less damaging was the decline in his fortunes as a composer.
It is a highly volatile drama, yet Zemlinsky shows formidable control over its structure
Following the award of the prestigious Beethoven Prize in 1897 and the considerable success enjoyed by his fairy-tale opera , premiered at the Vienna Opera in 1900, Zemlinsky was fully expecting to make further waves in Viennese musical life. But his luck seems to have run out. The cancelled first performance of his next stage work, (‘Görge the Dreamer’), was a cruel blow, not least because its removal came about not for artistic reasons (‘Clothes make the man’), effectively convinced Zemlinsky to leave the Austrian capital and relocate to Prague, where he became conductor at the German Opera House.
