It may be a masterpiece, but Alexander Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony remains a rarity in the classical repertoire and is seldom performed in concerts. That is why the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra has chosen this work by the Austrian composer for this year's Hong Kong Arts Festival. 'The festival always likes something a bit more special. What's the point if we just do another subscription concert? So I thought Zemlinsky would be very special,' says the orchestra's artistic director and chief conductor, Edo de Waart. 'It is a particularly wonderful work; and it's a Hong Kong premiere.' Written in the early 1920s, the Lyric Symphony is a collection of seven songs for soprano, baritone and orchestra based on the poems of Indian poet and Nobel Prize laureate Rabindranath Tagore. They tell of love and parting, and the exotic poetry, with its mystical and spiritual allusions, inspired Zemlinsky to pen what was arguably his best work. It regained popularity in recent decades after surviving the second world war, when much music written by Austrian composers around the time was either neglected or destroyed. Zemlinsky left Vienna for the United States in 1938 and settled in New York, where he remained, virtually unknown, until his death at age 70 in 1942. De Waart says it's hard to explain what makes the Lyric Symphony a gem without falling into cliches, but points out how well the music reflects the text. The composer chose seven poems from Tagore's collection, entitled The Gardener. Critics have noted that while the seven songs are independent from each other, as there is no story to link the seven different poems together, the poetry unfolds as a sort of narrative, one part portraying the various stages of love: desire, fulfilment and separation. De Waart offers his reading of one verse. 'A person goes: 'I'm curious, I would like to go and see other places. I would like to touch other things, but I don't have the art of flying, I cannot fly. All the doors are closed.' 'It's a metaphor, I think, for being hemmed up in his own life and not being able to break out of it. And Zemlinsky wrote incredibly wonderful music for that. It's very hard to describe; you will have to hear it. It's a masterpiece.' Zemlinsky wasn't the first to set songs on a symphonic scale, using the resources of a large orchestra as accompaniment; his contemporary, Gustav Mahler, penned Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) about a decade earlier, between 1908 and 1909. Comparison becomes inevitable. The Dutch conductor says he won't say one is better than the other, but 'I'd say that Mahler at his best is better than anybody at his best from that time. Even Zemlinsky at his best could not stand up to Mahler. The last movement in Das Lied von der Erde, Der Abschied (The Farewell), is 25 minutes of absolute genius. 'Abschied became Mahler's farewell to the world. [Its end] flows away ... like someone dying ... only Mahler could write that. [To convey the emotion of] letting go of what is worldly, letting go of possession, letting go of the wish to hold on to life and let it just flow away, I think that is incredible. 'Zemlinsky was very good, too, but I would not say that he was at the absolute same level. But some of the songs are just as good as some of the earlier songs in Das Lied von der Erde.' The Viennese composer belonged to a generation of great artists from early 20th century Germany and Austria that includes not only Mahler, but also composers Kurt Weill, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Franz Schreker, painter Gustav Klimt, and poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht. De Waart describes Zemlinsky as a 'very erudite man' who was aware of what went on around him, and says Das Lied von der Erde must have inspired him tremendously. 'But the Lyric Symphony has, in a way, a little bit more perfume to it. Where Mahler is more of this earth, Zemlinsky is a little bit more decadent ... a bit more like French cheese ... there is a slight scent of decay, of not everything being totally pure and prim and wonderful.' Sundaram Tagore, the great-grandson of Rabindranath, says the poet's work - which is both personal and political, and has often been described as magical and lyrical - remains as relevant today as it was in the last two centuries. 'Tagore speaks of a longing for perfection. He wanted a betterment of the human race. He wanted his fellow human beings to transcend boundaries. Ultimately, his poetry is uplifting. It deals with universal messages so, of course, it's still relevant today,' says the international gallerist. Soprano Malin Hartelius and baritone Konrad Jarnot will be joining the orchestra for the concerts on February 25 and 27. De Waart says the seven-movement piece, which he 'had a great time' performing before, poses its own technical challenge - in the balance and 'catching the atmosphere'. 'I always describe Germany between the two world wars as having a sort of decadence. It was Marlene Dietrich, that sort of atmosphere. Smoky rooms where people sang cabaret songs ... Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht ... that sort of atmosphere,' he says. 'Zemlinsky has quite a bit of that and we need to catch that without cleaning it up or overdoing it.' The conductor has programmed two pieces by Richard Strauss to partly set the scene for the Lyric Symphony. The concert opens with Serenade in E-flat, a short and fun piece for winds with 13 players written by the German composer when he was still in his teens, before Metamorphosen, a work for strings composed towards the end of Strauss' life. 'It's a requiem for his country, which was in the process of being destroyed [at the end of the second world war],' De Waart says. 'Towards the end [of the piece] he closed [with several bars from] Beethoven's Eroica's funeral march. It always gives me goosebumps when that comes. It's so poignant, and ends very quietly. 'After that, we go back to an earlier time and play Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony. I have never done this combination together before, but I think it will work very well.' Feb 25 and 27, 8pm. HK Cultural Centre Concert Hall. Tickets: HK$120-HK$380. Inquiries: 2721 2030