Schubert / Shostakovich / Konzerthaus Chamber Orch - Chamber Symphonies - SUPER-AUDIO CD [Super Audio CD (SACD)]

Following a highly successful series 'Mendelssohn in Birmingham', the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with their former Chief Conductor Edward Gardner here presents the first volume in a new surround-sound series Schubert Symphonies. This first volume comprises of three symphonies spanning across Schubert's short productive composing life. His Symphony No. 3 (1815), with it's extensive and evolving slow introduction modelled on late Haydn is followed by the culminating distillation of Schubertian classicism that is his 'little' Symphony No. 5 (1816). Scored for chamber orchestra, it tells of much more of an influence of Mozart, for whom Schubert seemed to have felt a special affinity with around this time. Completing the album is Schubert's much more intense (with a turbulent first movement and serene second) Symphony No. 8 InchunfinishedInch (1822), of which only the first two movements and a skeleton sketch of a third Scherzo movement were completed.

Schubert composed his first five symphonies while still a teenager, but they represent just one facet of his prodigious fluency. At this time some of his musical ideas bear a family resemblance to certain themes from Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, but already his own musical character is evident. He began his Second Symphony in December 1814 and had finished it by March 24th of the following year. He completed the Fourth Symphony in about three to four weeks during April 1816. We should not read too much into the Fourth Symphony's InchTragicInch appendage, added by Schubert as an afterthought. It may be merely an example of the flippant comments which he wrote on some of his youthful scores, but nevertheless the symphony has more gravitas than it's predecessors. Schubert also includes a second pair of horns to enrich the texture. Actually, this is the only piece of non-programmatic music to which he gave a descriptive title. After completing the symphonic cycles of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, Jan Willem de Vriend now undertakes Schubert's complete symphonic output. This is the first volume in that series.

Details 1. Schubert Symphony No 1 in D Major, D82 2. Schubert Adrast, D137 Funeral March 3. Schubert Symphony No 2 in B Flat Major, D125 4. Schubert Rosamunde, D797 Overture