Schubert : The Complete Symphonies Vol. 2 (Nos. 1, 3, 8)

Albumbeschreibung

In September 2018, the first volume of Franz Schubert’s complete symphonies was released under the bright, precise and joyful lead of Jan Willem de Vriend (featuring Symphony No. 2 and Symphony No. 4). This second volume mostly fulfils expectations, with a few unforeseen nuances. It’s worth mentioning that the Symphony No. 1 in D major written by sixteen-year-old Schubert is touching, in more ways than one. First of all because it is constructed with brazen confidence, and casually – without any attempt at hiding it – covers Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor, oscillating incessantly between major and minor modes with the subtle mastery of modulation, which the Austrian composer would use throughout his life.

As for the Symphony No. 3, also in D major, it is more Haydn − who died only six years before Schubert started working on this piece – who inspired the young composer. While the structure stemmed from his London symphonies, the melodies already bore the marks and melodic contours of the future composer of Die schöne Müllerin. At the other end of the corpus is the Unfinished Symphony, written in a radically different language because in the meantime, classicism had mutated into apprehensive romanticism, with a form of weariness growing around this magnificent music, rich with dizzying melancholy. Dropped by its author, like many others he left unfinished, it yet seems to end in pain and disarray, as a masterful question mark upon our miserable human destiny… © François Hudry/Qobuz