Dating from 1905, Zemlinsky’s three-movement orchestral fantasy Die Seejungfrau has a vexed history. Based on Hans Andersen’s Little Mermaid, it’s a very adult study of erotic yearning that aims to capture the tale’s mood, though not its narrative. Seemingly never satisfied with it, Zemlinsky cut an extended sequence inspired by the Mermaid’s encounter with the Witch shortly before the premiere, then proceeded to withdraw the score altogether in 1910. It only re-entered the repertory in the 1980s. John Storgårds’s recording uses a new critical edition by Anthony Beaumont that restores the excised passage, and with it a greater sense of dramatic and emotional contrast, though the performance itself is too cool for my taste. Its companion piece is the 1935 Sinfonietta, given in a chamber version originally prepared by Roland Freisitzer for the Ensemble Kontrapunkte in 2013. It’s no masterpiece, though its astringent neo-classicism belies the commonly held assumption that Zemlinsky’s idiom was solely post-Romantic and fevered.
