VIENNA — For decades, early 20th-century composers who wrote in a tonal idiom struggled to be taken seriously. Not progressive enough for the modern-music scene but too adventurous for concertgoers who prefer familiar works, Korngold, Martinů, Blitzstein, and many others were often relegated to the sidelines. But the tides are changing. On Oct. 11, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra presented a program of Alexander Zemlinsky and Lili Boulanger, the latter a composer in focus this month at the Musikverein.
The younger sister of the famous pedagogue Nadia Boulanger — who taught such leading composers as Aaron Copland and Philip Glass — Lili became the first woman to win the prestigious Prix de Rome, in 1913, with her cantata Faust et Hélène. She composed despite a weak immune system, having contracted pneumonia as a young child. When she died at 24, she had yet to finish her opera La Princesse Maleine, based on a text by Maurice Maeterlinck. A catalogue of some 50 preserved works consists mostly of choral and vocal music.
Her Psaume 130, presented under the baton of the orchestra’s music director designate Markus Poschner, emerges as a kind of mini-cantata, revealing a strong command of dramatic form and imaginative use of orchestral color. The short exposition begins with primordial rumbling in the low strings, sustained organ, percussion, and tuba. The horns then lead the way to a solo melody for the double-reed sarrusophone, answered by a two-note motive in the brass that foreshadows the word “Jahvé” (God) in the ensuing text.
By turns, the work written in Rome in 1916 expresses desperation and spiritual conviction. The composer was at once reckoning with the death of her father, the composer Ernest Boulanger, the outbreak of world war two years previously, and her persistent ill health. Eerie dissonances emerge as the chorus begs in homophony for the skies to hear her prayer (“Que tes oreilles soient attentives aux accents de ma prière!”), resolving to consonance on “Jahvé” in the following stanza.
The orchestra repeatedly serves to reaffirm the presence of God, first with an explosive climax that yields to an inquisitive passage for alto solo (sung by Claudia Mahnke), then with luminous, post-impressionist textures. The psalm ends with a vehement declaration that God will liberate Israel from all iniquities. Poschner brought the RSO and choristers of the Singverein to dramatic climaxes with intensity but also spaciousness.
The work was nicely paired with Boulanger’s Vieille prière bouddhique, a score from the same period that exploits the sarrusophone as it explores modality. The orchestral colors often recall Debussy, and the ensemble under Poschner remained gentle and transparent while also conveying the work’s deep spirituality. Down from the altar, the tenor Paul Schweinester sang a solo plea for humankind to attain happiness that is echoed by the female chorus.
Zemlinsky’s Die Seejungfrau (The Mermaid), a tone poem based on the popular tale by Hans Christian Andersen, occupied the second half of the program. The opening of growling low brass and strings creates a parallel with Boulanger’s Psaume 130 as the composer depicts the depths of the ocean. Soon thereafter woodwinds dance like light reflecting off the water’s surface.
The mood is peaceful but melancholy until the onset of a theme representing the human world that at one point breaks out into a waltz. The commotion contrasts with the solo violin representing the mermaid. As the music depicts the outbreak of a storm, Poschner led the brass with precise gestures, only for the serenity of the ocean to return with shimmering textures.
The inner movement constantly exploits new colors in the orchestra, with melodies clearly depicting the mermaid’s longing to be part of the festivities on land. The mood is almost ecstatic but then turns ominous. The RSO’s sumptuous strings and flexible woodwinds vividly painted the events, which are at once programmatic and abstract (Zemlinsky originally sketched the work in four sections but eventually considered the work a fantasy).
The final movement, which he designated to be performed “with painful expression” (mit schmerzvollen Ausdruck), unfolded with turbulent emotion as the mermaid wrestles with the decision of whether to kill the prince and return to the sea or die. Rumblings from the bottom of the ocean, then a shimmering on its surface, seem to represent the moment she throws the dagger into the depths and begins to dissolve. In the final measures, a resplendent sunset breaks out, cinematic in its pictorial qualities. The RSO’s swelling dynamics and lilting rhythms — one might say an authentic Viennese touch — only made the images more clear.
Less than two decades after Die Seejungfrau premiered in 1905, Zemlinsky’s protégé Arnold Schoenberg began writing 12-tone music. An ideological divide ensued: How was it possible to write tonal music in the face of social catastrophe, in aftermath of a calamitous war? And had the possibilities of tonality not been exhausted? As Zemlinsky regains his rightful place and composers such as Lili Boulanger are reevaluated, we may be entering a period in which the expressive but tonal works of once-marginalized voices
are restored to the concert hall.
