Schubert: Unfinished & The Great Symphonies

Chronique

Hats off to Marek Janowski, who was in his early eighties when this album was recorded with the Dresden Philharmonic in late 2020. He shows no signs of slowing down, and in fact, these are completely fresh versions of Schubert's much-recorded last two symphonies (intelligently listed here simply by their nicknames, sidestepping the vexing numbering question). Recordings of the big Schubert symphonies often fall into classifications of Classical-period-oriented, exemplified most famously by those of George Szell and Romantic. Janowski's is part of the latter group, but they are Romantic readings of a specific kind. Janowski's work with the Dresden group has been involved mostly with opera, and these are quite operatic symphony readings, filled with small, dialogue-like gestures that propel the narrative along and cohere into strong examples of what younger television viewers would call a story arc. Consider the first movement of the Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944 ("Great"), where Janowski shapes the strings' initial response to the horn call in such a way that it has the flavor of a vocal entrance. This has substantial implications for the future occurrences of this figure, which really holds the entire movement together. The horns at the beginning of the finale are Wagnerian, heraldic. Except for the fairly slow tempo in the first movement of the Symphony No. 8 in B minor ("Unfinished"), Janowski's tempos are pretty much in the middle, but they often seem slow because there is so much episodic detail revealed. A Schubert release that will interest even those who have heard these works many times.

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