Customer Reviews

Schubert: The 10 Symphonies

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Phillips has recently released as a box set all of the recordings made by Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields of Schubert's symphonic scores, including orchestrated fragments completed by musicologist Brian Newbould. Without question, this is a historically important set of recordings since it was the first of several which introduced new scholarship into the performances of Schubert's symphonies. Whether it is as important a cycle as either Abbado's or Harnoncourt's is one I will leave to more astute music critics. However, I believe that these performances aren't nearly as riveting or as inspired as those which Abbado coaxed from the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and those from Harnoncourt and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. The best of the performances have to be those of the 1st and 2nd symphonies, followed by the 8th ("Unfinished", though here "finished" courtesy of Newbould) and the 9th symphonies. Although my primary Schubert symphony recommendations are for the two cycles conducted by Abbado and Harnoncourt; Marriner's recordings are an intriguing alternative for a cycle recorded within the past twenty five years.

Mr. Kwok is right in the fact that this set of recordings is historically important. Included in this set are Symphonies 7, 10, and two other unnumbered ones. In addition, the 8th symphony has been completed with an orchestration of fragments of the 3rd movement, and by adding the entr'acte of Rosemunde as a 4th movement, which is similar in structure to the other movements. (This has been done before.)
I was fascinated by the 7th and the 10th. (They didn't quite seem like the others. This might have been, and probably was due to the fact that Mr. Newbould orchestrated these. Although he does an exquisite job, it's just not quite like Schubert.) Anyway, these two unnumbered symphonies provide further insight into Schubert's symphonic progression. We usually have a gap between the first 6 symphonies and the very different 8th. This has now been filled in. The 7th symphony seems much like a combination of various aspects of the early symphonies and of the 8th. The 10th symphony sounds a lot like the 9th. Schubert gets more in depth with counterpoint than in any of the other symphonies. Schubert died before writing any of the 4th movement, so this is, essentially, the "'new' unfinished symphony" of the Schubert cycle.
This set is just what you'd expect from Marriner and the ASMF. It is graceful, together, crisp, you might even say it's dainty. The tempos are sometimes fast, but it seems they are deathly slow other times. The first movement of the 8th sounds like a funeral dirge, as it does with many other conductors. You can tell Schubert wanted the tempos much faster in some places. It would make his symphonies seem so much more exciting. If you're looking for sheer power, look elsewhere.
I am no Schubert expert, nor have I heard many other recordings of his symphonies. I would definitely recommend a listening-to of these. That much is imperative. As for a purchase, you could probably find better recordings elsewhere.

A classical music buff looking at the title of this album could be forgiven for being confused. "The Ten Symphonies"? But Schubert only wrote 7 plus one "Unfinished"... Didn't he?

It turns out the story is more complicated. After writing his first six symphonies, Schubert completed a full outline for a seventh that he set aside and for some reason never returned to. He then completed the first two movements of a new symphony, which was eventually numbered "8" by musicologists and given the title "Unfinished." There was also a sketch for the third movement of the 8th that Schubert never completed, and a separate overture that musicologists have long suspected was originally intended to be the finale to the 8th. Schubert then composed his great symphony in C Major, now numbered 9 (although it has historically also been numbered 7 or 8). And finally, he completed the piano score for a tenth symphony. His sketchbooks also contain other symphonic fragments.

This set of recordings not only presents Schubert's completed symphonies, but also a remarkable achievement -- the recreation or realization, by musicologist Brian Newbould, of the 7th, the full 8th, and the 10th symphony. These realizations are not, in a strict sense, true authentic works of Schubert, but rather, as Newbould acknowledges, speculative "educated guesses" as to what those symphonies would sound like had they been completed. But they are nonetheless fascinating, and very listenable.

The performances of all tens symphonies, and the symphonic fragments, are solid, as one would expect from Neville Marriner and the Academy. All around, a unique experience.

The standard, finished symphonies in this set are given very standard but glowing performances. It is an excellent set just for that. The special news, of course, is the collection of unfinished orchestral movements included in the disks, including Newbould's conjectural reconstructions of symphony 7 and 10 and a finished Unfinished. The latter two are especially important and beautiful, offering plausible Schubert that bears listening and relistening.

Here is a personal tip concerning the finished Unfinished (8th symphony), which includes the Scherzo that Schubert fully composed in piano score, but only began to orchestrate, and the B-minor Entracte from Rosamunde, often thought to be the intended finale to the 8th symphony.

I recommend making the Scherzo the second movement, and the slow movement the third. There is no precedent for this in the other Schubert symphonies, but there is ample precedent in other classical-period pieces (most famously, Beethoven's ninth symphony). In this symphony, it has the result of making the Scherzo a vigorous palate cleansing between two dreamy movements. I find it works very well, and I much prefer it to the more obvious order. Just a suggestion (but a good one!).

Schubert: The 10 Symphonies

I don't have a lot to add to D. Whittaker's excellent review of the Academy of St Martin-in-the-fields' recordings of the Schubert symphonic oeuvre. But to really appreciate the set of recordings to the fullest, one should also get the book "Schubert and the Symphony: A New Perspective," by Brian Newbould. Prof. Newbould has made a special study of Schubert's symphonies and is the one who has completed the Unfinished Symphony 8 and provided orchestrations of the sketches of Symphonies 7 and 10. His book devotes a chapter to each symphony and is intended to be read in conjunction with hearing recordings of them. Newbould's book can also be ordered through Amazon.com.

The most interesting music is on CD-5 of the set: Symphonies 7 and 10. Symphony 7 has a long, dramatic introduction that was completely orchestrated by Schubert himself, but the rest of the symphony is more like his earlier works than the masterpieces that followed. That may be partly a result of the way Newbould decided to orchestrate the part that Schubert didn't, but No 7 seems rather lightweight after such a portentous opening, although there are some beautiful Schubertian moments in the score. On the other hand, Symphony 10, which Schubert worked on right up to his untimely death, is a real gem. Schubert left piano sketches (with some orchestral notations) of only 3 movements, and it's unclear whether he intended the last movement to be a combined scherzo-finale (it's a sonata-rondo) or planned to add another movement. This movement is unusual in that it uses more counterpoint than any of his other orchestral works. But the most memorable movement is the second with its haunting double theme and plucked bass. On hearing it for the first time, I immediately thought of Bruckner!

One could probably find more impressive individual recordings of several of these symphonies elsewhere, but as a set these recordings are of consistently high quality. The Academy and Marriner tend to take tempi on the fast side, which generally suits me and, I think, is closer to what Schubert intended than some of the draggy tempi that one sometimes hears in the 8th and 9th. Occasionally, however, Marriner is too fast, for example in the first movement of the 10th. Schubert's marking is "allegro maestoso," but the way Marriner takes it, much of the maestoso is lost. By and large, though, his tempi fit the music well, in my opinion.

The recorded sound is generally excellent; the recordings were made in 1981-84. This is the only set of all 10 symphonies currently available. I recommend it for the serious student of Schubert and his symphonic output.

At their height in the Seventies and Eighties, the unassuming Academy of St.-Martin-in-the-Fields, based in the famous church on Trafalgar Square, churned out mega hits one after another. They perfectly matched a younger market who wanted to hear classical music in a pleasant, no hassle style, as easily assimilated as granola bars. The level of execution was high, and Neville Marriner had no pretentious to greatness. When you go to the church today, most concerts are drop-in affairs where the audience wears jeans and T-shirts. the Academy's records give off the same vibe. Soon they were billed as "the world's most recorded orchestra," and the appeal of their style is such that the Penguin Guide gives top honors to Marriner's Schubert cycle, praising it over Colin Davis, Gunter Wand, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Karl Boehm, and Karajan.

It's one thing to rub off old shellac but another to take the painting with it. If you begin with Marriner's Unfinished," acknowledged as a masterpiece when Shucbert's early symphonic output was dismissed as juvenilia, the performance perfectly fits Gertrude Stein's scathing description of Chicago: There's o there there. the reading is one uninterrupted span of polite execution with a few climaxes (the music gets louder) but no events. At the other extreme, if you turn to ambitious youthful works like Sym. #1, which need a strong interpretation to make their case, Marriner pushes the score through the same mill and winds up with the same result, a pleasantry. Does this music actually mean anything to him? In the days sixty years ago when Beecham stood up as a rare champion of the Third and Sixth, he found much more than buoyancy and high spirits. Those aren't bad things, naturally, but we've learned to look deeper than that when it comes to Haydn, and the same applies to Schubert.

Musicologist Brian Newbould has undertaken completions of the sketches that Schubert left for various aborted projects, including a lost Sym. #7, the last two movements of the "Unfinished," and the Tenth that the composer never lived to continue with. All are curiosities, but harmless enough -- you can program them out if you want the "Unfinished," for example, to sound the way it was published. Scholarly completeness also supplies three Symphonic Fragments, and Newbould has polished up the markings in the scores of the early works.

I realize that I stand alone among the cheering reviewers here at Amazon, but do a simple A-B comparison. Play Marriner's breezy, carefree reading of the finale to the "Great" C major and then the same movement as interpreted by Furtwangler, Klemperer, Karajan, Bernstein, or Sinopoli. They are by no means look-alikes, but what they all have in common is the sense that masterpieces call for us to delve deep into the realm of emotions, not skate merrily over the surface.

There are a number of recordings of Schubert's symphonies. But only a couple include Brian Newbould's reconstructions of some of Schubert's other unfinished symphonic works.

I think it is very interesting to see the progression of Schubert's thought as we go from the 6th symphony (D, 589) to the D. 615 fragment, to the D. 708 bigger fragment, and then to the sketchy 7th symphony (D. 729). These are not polished works, but I like listening to them occasionally.

My biggest complaint is not with these sketches, but with Newbould's attempt to complete the "Unfinished Symphony," namely the 8th. The first movement is gorgeous and the second, also complete, is just fine. But what about the 3rd and 4th movements?

Schubert did indeed write the opening theme to the 3rd movement and scored the first few bars. But I do not like the way it comes out here. First, Newbould's variations (needed, to complete the movement) just aren't all that Schubertian, in my humble opinion. And they aren't that good. Second, I don't like the part Schubert wrote! I think Schubert may have realized that he was not getting what he wanted out of the movement, and that may be why he stopped where he did.

The 4th movement is simply the overture to Rosamunde, and it may indeed have been exactly what Schubert wanted to be the finale to that symphony. Or it may have been close to it. Or it may not have been! I think putting it in as the finale is a good (but definitely not great) idea.

My favorite of the reconstructions is the 10th symphony, especially the dreamy second movement.

I recommend this set of Schubert symphonies.

With three exceptions (nos. 5, 8, and 9), the symphonies of Franz Schubert have only gained recognition in concert halls outside of the middle European orchestras in relatively recent decades. Why this should be so is quite a mystery, since, in his short lifetime, Schubert composed symphonic works that, while reflecting his appreciation for melody, also still followed the traditions set down by his predecessors Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. And even now, there are not as many complete Schubert symphonic cycles as there are of most of the other major composers, though, of those that there are, there are great performances to be had of them, notably Claudio Abbado's late 1980s set with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.

The cycle that Sir Neville Marriner and his Academy of St. Martin In The Fields made for Philips in the early 1980s, however, is incredibly noteworthy for many reasons. Not only does it contain the symphonies that we know of, but it also contains fragments of would-be symphonies that were assembled and arranged in the late 1970s by English musicologist Brian Newbould. It also fills in the gap that existed for more than a century and a half between the 6th and 8th symphonies with the E Major Symphony No. 7, a work that Schubert had actually sketched out completely but only managed to orchestrate the first 110 bars of before mysteriously leaving it incomplete; this work, again, was largely realised by Newbould. Also on here is the D Major Tenth Symphony, which Schubert was working on when he died his tragically early death in November 1828 and which, once more, was realized by Newbould (it should be noted also that Luciano Berio's 1989 composition "Rendering" is based on those very same sketches that Newbould used).

What may be considered a controversial move involves the ultra-popular Symphony No. 8, which Schubert had, of course, left unfinished (hence its nickname, the Unfinished Symphony). Newbould managed to somehow "finish" it with an orchestration of a scherzo that Schubert may have intended to put into the symphony (but, for reasons unknown, never did), and then utilize the B-minor Entr'acte No. 1 from "Rosamunde" for the work's finale. Newbould has, in fact, speculated that the entr'acte, which has the same instrumentation (including trombones), and is in the same key, as the symphony, was intended as the symphony's finale; the actual evidence for this, however, is inconclusive at best.

In a very real way, both by their performances of the symphonies we know of, the reconstructed fragments, and the realizations of the Seventh and Tenth Symphonies, Marriner and his Academy have done a very good job by Schubert. The early symphonies, while the output of a very young composer, nevertheless overflow with an astonishing amount of maturity and understanding of combining melody with structure, while the later 8th and 9th symphonies, like those of Beethoven, are works that look forward into not only the 19th century, but the 20th as well. Both the Seventh and Tenth symphonies, however, which received their first-ever recordings in the Newbould reconstructions here, are very revelatory--the Seventh as showing the composer continuing the experiment of shifts in mood and modulation in keys and volume that were begun in the Little C Major; and the Tenth giving us a shade of an idea of how much further Schubert might have gone had he not passed away a little more than two months short of his 32nd birthday.

In lieu of one of our orchestras here in America taking up the Schubert symphonic cause in total, Marriner and the ASMF have fashioned a Schubert cycle that is as good as any out there, even though it is close to three decades old. There is a great deal to be had in this collection, and I highly recommend it.