Lucie Hájková (soprano), Zemlinsky Quartet, Prazak Quartet, Vladimir Fortin (cello), Jaromír Klepác (piano) Praga Digitals
PRD/DSD 250284****

Brahms is the dominant spirit behind four early chamber works from the 1890s by Alexander Zemlinsky. Zemlinsky was criticised, praised and helped by Brahms, and seems to have had elements of the older composer's methods in his blood. Three Pieces for cello and piano (1892) and Cello Sonata in A (1894) predate the meeting of the two men. The Two Pieces for string quintet (1894-96) are all that remain of a work Brahms picked apart for the hapless Zemlinsky, but they achieve a sense of new individuality. More striking still is the incomplete Richard Dehmel setting, Maiblumen blühten überall, for soprano and string sextet. Its overtones of Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht(which it predates), remind us that Zemlinsky gave lessons to Schoenberg, who also later became his brother- in-law. See url.ie/aa85