Schubert: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 7

Album review

Schubert’s symphonies have been very popular in recent years. The fact that they belong to early Viennese classicism (the first six at least), coming in the wake of Haydn and Mozart, is a blessing for so-called "authentic" performances. The rest are part of a romanticism that favours a wider expression. With a Ghanaian father and German mother, Kevin John Edusei grew up in Bielefeld before studying in Berlin and then in the United States where he worked with David Zinman who became his mentor. Back in Europe, the young conductor was appointed Principal Conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra in 2013. Together with his orchestra, he gives a light and delicate performance of Symphony No. 3, composed by an eighteen-year-old Schubert. It brilliantly contrasts with the other unfinished symphony, the Seventh (as numbered) in E major, D 729. Presumably composed in August, 1821, only the first 110 bars are fully finished. The rest is incomplete but “entirely noted” according to Felix Weingartner who was the first person to patiently try to reconstruct the composition. This was before the work of the English musicologist Brian Newbould, who produced the new version presented here in 1980. However, the work has never been part of the repertoire. Yet, as Kevin John Edusei points out in the libretto of this album, this Seventh symphony represents a fascinating link between youth and maturity that would lead Schubert to his Great Symphony in C major after having, once again, forsaken his Symphony in B minor. © François Hudry/Qobuz