I’m jumping in for an ill colleague at Austria’s Osterfestival in the heart of the Alps. The program is Berg’s luscious Sieben frühe Lieder and Zemlinsky’s little-known and absolutely gorgeous Maeterlinck Lieder, performed in an arrangement for chamber orchestra by Reinbert de Leeuw. Reinbert (the founder and conductor of Asko|Schönberg, the Netherlands’ most storied new-music band) also conducts the performance, which features players of the Belgian ensemble Het Collectief. I wish my colleague a speedy recovery; my adrenaline is high as I dive into this gorgeous repertoire that evokes the world of Klimt and Art Nouveau. (It was almost exactly four years ago that I jumped in for a recital in the Concertgebouw’s Kleine Zaal in similar repertoire of Marx, Korngold, and Strauss; read the glowing review of that performance here.)