Sunday Classics preview: Before the "Unfinished," Schubert wrote six pretty wonderful symphonies

by Ken

Our target this week is Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, which is unfinished not in the sense that there is anything the least incomplete about the two great movements Schubert wrote, but that that's all he wrote, except for some preliminary sketches he did write down but clearly abandoned.

Before the Unfinished, which is now more or less universally known as Schubert's Symphony No. 8, he composed six symphonies. The trick in the numbering is that there is no Symphony No. 7; this now generally accepted numbering dates from a time when it was believed that there was a path-breaking giant "lost" symphony between what became known as Nos. 6 and 8. There wasn't. But it's too confusing to go back and make the appropriate subtractions from the symphonies we know as Nos. 8 and 9.

There's really no way of typing the first six Schubert symphonies. It's often suggested to pay close attention to the woodwind writing, which is a good idea, but you really don't need the suggestion because the woodwind writing is going to grab you on its own. It's often suggested to listen for the buoyant, songful influence of Rossini, which is to say the Rossini of the great comic masterpieces, and this again is a good idea. In case you were wondering, yes indeed, Schubert would have heard a good deal of Rossini.

Since the Unfinished has only a first and a second movement, in our previews we're only going to concern ourselves with first and second movements, which generally, at least in Schubert's time, represented particular sets of compositional challenges. I could have chosen one of each at random. Instead the choice isn't quite random; these are just movements that I love, and I hope you will too. The performances, incidentally, are from complete traversals of the Schubert symphonies which I like a lot.


SCHUBERT: Symphony No. 2 in B-flat, D. 125:
i. Largo; Allegro vivace

Staatskapelle Berlin, Otmar Suitner, cond. Denon, recorded July 8-12, 1985


SCHUBERT: Symphony No. 6 in C, D. 589:
ii. Andante

English Sinfonia, Sir Charles Groves, cond. IMP, recorded March 1991


IN TOMORROW NIGHT'S PREVIEW --

We hear the first two movements of Schubert's Fifth Symphony, in preparation for Sunday's assault on the Unfinished


SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS

The current list is here.

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