The Power of Love

Renowned through his many, inspired Lieder, Schubert’s gift for melody is also abundantly evident in his ‘Unfinished’ Symphony. The variety and immediacy of the themes suffusing its two movements are breathtaking; it is powerful, satisfying music. No one really knows why he never completed it – perhaps it was left unfinished because it could not, need not be finished. Alexander Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony owes a clear debt to his contemporary Mahler and his Das Lied von der Erde. Looking eastward, setting poems by Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore, and merging symphony with opera, baritone and soprano alternate with one another over the course of the seven movements in what amounts to an exploration of longing and desire. The orchestral writing is delicate and refined which bathes the singers in a luminous beauty of shades and colours.