Zemlinsky is still a far from repertory composer. No recording company can bank on a group of reliable 'Zemlinsky specialists' when planning a CD devoted to his music, and any such recording is bound to be something of a risk. Not so much in Chailly's case: his recording of the (admittedly not wholly characteristic) Second Symphony a few years ago (Decca, 3/89), to say nothing of his splendid account of Schoenberg's Gurrelieder (Decca, 3/91), have marked him out as a conductor who should feel at home in this music. But how would the orchestra take to it, and the soloists (none of whom have recorded a note of Zemlinsky before so far as I know)?
The result is one of those recordings where pretty well everything seems to have gone right. With the Concertgebouw one has no fear that the sheer beauty of Zemlinsky's orchestral textures will be understated, but the urgency and strength beneath the surfaces are evident too, and it's quite an achievement for such an orchestra of Mahler specialists to get Zemlinsky's sound, so like Mahler and yet so very unlike, unerringly right. The soloists are simply superb: Marc is voluptuously caressing, not least in her sensuous use of portamento, but very intelligent in her use of words, her understanding of the dramatic gist of her three songs, and her extended lower register gives her both security at the bottom of the range and a beautiful shading of mezzo-ish warmth; Hagegard has nobility and strength as well as tenderness, and the Lieder singer's subtlety that the third and last songs need: it's hard to say which of his utterances of the crucial phrase ''Du bist mein Eigen mein Eigen'' (''You are my own, my own'') is the loveliest. Throughout the orchestral playing is immaculately balanced as well as sheerly beautiful, I don't know that I've ever heard a better performance of the symphony.
Was Willard White chosen for the Symphonische Gesange because they are settings of black American poets? If so, he has the intelligence to realize that there is nothing especially 'ethnic' about them; to realize also, as does Chailly, that although only one opus number separates them from Ein lyrische Symphonie they inhabit a different world, harsher and more bitter. They require great vocal splendour but also a certain reserve, the ability not to underline emotions that are clear enough in words and music already. White and Chailly succeed admirably, and thus give this coupling the added benefit of presenting a more rounded portrait of Zemlinsky than any other recording that I know of either work. A distinguished issue, most warmly recommended. '