Did the title move Berg to call his SQ Lyrische Suite?

That'll be me (one of those in-one-ear-out-the-other experiences; my fault I'm sure). Thanks Richard.

The Lyric Suite is dedicated to Zemlinsky indeed. Although perhaps partly because he couldn't really dedicate it publicly to the real dedicatee.

The quote is from the passage 'Du bist mein Eigen, mein Eigen...'

I got to know it through the Fischer-Dieskau/Várady/Maazel recording, although it really needs a slightly weightier baritone for my money. Seconding Richard's recommendation (of the piece rather than the recording, which I don't know).

You must be confusing me with someone else of the same name I think.

There's also this

which is very cheap indeed (and now has a different cover I think) and is worth having for the Berg string-orchestra arrangements of the three Lyric Suite movements, but the Zemlinsky is let down by the singers and never really comes to life for me.

I am a fervent advocate of Eduard Brunner's recording of Zemlinsky's trio op. 3 on the Tudor Musique Oblige label. Recorded 1985

Except I hadn't bought it for Zem, I bought it for the Webern arrangement of Schoenberg op. 9, which is on the same CD.

A version of this awesome photo is on the cover of said recording:

Alexander Zemlinscy was as well as conductor a first-rate composer, with a keen ear for appropriate harmonies. We recommend to Members his four String Quartets (if you have to choose but one, the second, dating from 1915, is the best), as well as his magnificent 1935 setting of the Thirteenth Psalm for voices and orchestra.

How unfortunate that he was forced to flee from Berlin to Vienna, from Ostmark to Prague, and from Bohemia-Moravia to the United American States, where of course sensitive soul he soon expired!

And it is peculiar indeed - quite a poor performance we might say - for there to have been eleven messages in this thread and not one mention of Sir Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel-prize winner who quite rightly resigned his knighthood in protest against the British and their repressive actions against Indians.

"Wheels within wheels" - that was the structural principle which Zemlinscy is said to have had from Tagore. The wheel of life you know. Janacek too was there with Zemlinscy at Tagore's Prague Bengali readings. This symphony, then, uses seven songs from Tagore's anthology "The Gardener," which deals foolish people try to tell us with the progress of a love "affair" - but no, it is in fact much more than that! The book is available to all on the Internet. Here is an English translation of the first song:

    I am restless. I am athirst for far-away things.
    My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance.
    O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute!
    I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.

    I am eager and wakeful, I am a stranger in a strange land.
    Thy breath comes to me whispering an impossible hope.
    Thy tongue is known to my heart as its very own.
    O Far-to-seek, O the keen call of thy flute!
    I forget, I ever forget, that I know not the way, that I have not the winged horse.

    I am listless, I am a wanderer in my heart.
    In the sunny haze of the languid hours, what vast vision of thine takes shape in the blue of the sky!
    O Farthest end, O the keen call of thy flute!
    I forget, I ever forget, that the gates are shut everywhere in the house where I dwell alone!

Such good stuff, isn't it!

P.S. It is indeed a fine and successful photograph in reply 9. But we nevertheless wish photographers would stop suggesting to subjects that they raise hand to chin. Such a posed look is not always the most desirable.

Congratulations to member Grew on an uncharacteristically enlightening post! And whoever thought that the late great Mr Cooper could turn up in a thread about Zemlinsky? An auspicious start to the day indeed.

The LaSalle recorded all of AZ's quartets, didn't they? Wonder if that's still to be had somewhere.