Sechs Gesänge op. 13

The orchestral version of the Six Songs op. 13 is published in a new critical edition including preface and revision report. Zemlinsky wrote the first four piano songs based on texts by Maurice Maeterlinck in Bad Ischl in 1910 and orchestrated them in 1913 for a performance conducted by Arnold Schönberg at the Vienna Musikverein, which would later go down in music history as the “scandal concert” (the uproar was caused primarily by the performances of Schönberg's Kammersymphonie op. 9, Webern's Sechs Stücke op. 6 and the Altenberg-Lieder).

In the same year, Zemlinsky composed two further songs to Maeterlinck poems, which he orchestrated in 1923. On June 5, the cycle was finally premiered in its present form at the Berlin Philharmonie: The composer himself conducted the Berliner Philharmoniker; Felicie Hüni-Mihacsek took on the soprano part.