This is the second recording of Zemlinsky's so-called Second Symphony (in fact his Third, though only two movements of the First survive) and it scores over its predecessor from Edgar Seipenbusch (on Marco Polo/Target) by the greater amplitude of its CD sound and by providing a very interesting fill-up. The fullness of the sound is a slightly mixed blessing, mind you: the charming, Bruckner-off-duty scherzo carries rather too much weight to dance convincingly, and in those few pages where the mature Zemlinsky peers from behind his expertly tailored borrowed garments (as well as Bruckner's baggy suit they include Brahms's tail-coat and Dvorak's rough tweed) his growing mastery of orchestral colour is sometimes obscured by a saturated richness of orchestral timbre. But in all other respects those who don't already have Seipenbusch's smaller-scaled account will find this a no less satisfying exploration of the constituents that were soon to jell into Zemlinsky's mature style.
It is a likeable piece, sometimes because of rather than despite its derivativeness: that scherzo is Brucknerian, but Bruckner could not have written it, just as the passacaglia-finale, an obvious homage to Brahms, is exuberantly prodigal with its ideas in a way that would have set the older master tut-tutting. The first movement, good though its material is, still sounds as though it should have ended two or three minutes before it does, and the turbulent central section of the Adagio still seems more melodramatic than functional, but it was a pleasure to hear the piece again and to see it standing up so well to the opulent treatment that Chailly gives it.
Psalm 23 is much later (it seems to date from around the same time as Zemlinsky's fourth opera, Kleider machen Leute, and the first version of his Maeterlinck songs) and it has much of the colour and the free chromaticism that one would expect. The text and the choral medium, however, have drawn from Zemlinsky a charmingly delicate pastoral lyricism that one does not associate with his name and, in the climaxes, a sonorous diatonicism that evokes an ambience half-way between Hollywood and the Three Choirs Festival. I mean neither comparison dismissively, but the Psalm is in its own way almost as uncharacteristic of Zemlinsky the opera composer and quartet writer as the symphony is. It, too, is very enjoyable, though, and admirably performed; in this work the sumptuousness of the recording is quite appropriate, and obscures nothing.'