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Schubert: Symphonies Nos. 5 and 8 / Rosamunde

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Schubert: Symphonies Nos. 5 and 8 / Rosamunde

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Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828) Symphony No.8 in B minor (Unfinished) D. 759 Symphony No.5 in B flat major D. 485 Rosamunde D. 797 Vienna has always claimed...

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Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828)

Symphony No.8 in B minor (Unfinished) D. 759

Symphony No.5 in B flat major D. 485

Rosamunde D. 797

Vienna has always claimed Franz Schubert as its own. Of his immediate predecessors, Haydn came from the village of Rohrau, Mozart came to the city from provincial Salzburg, while Beethoven travelled there from his native Bonn. Schubert was born in Vienna and spent most of his life there. His family, however, were from another part of the Habsburg empire. Schubert's father, Franz Theodor, was from Moravia and his mother from Silesia. The former had joined his elder brother as a schoolmaster in the capital, while the latter's father had been driven there after financial troubles at home.

Franz Schubert, born in 1797, was the fourth surviving child of 14 born to his mother. His musical abilities were fostered as a chorister in the Imperial Chapel, a position that brought with it the chance of a decent education at the Staatskonvikt and also an association with the old Court Kapellmeister Antonio Salieri, whose influence on him was considerable. In 1812 his voice broke, but this need not have ended his schooling. Faced, however, with a choice between music and academic study he chose to leave, and in 1814 entered a school for the training of teachers. His father's school was, after all, the customary family business, demanding the assistance of his sons. In 1815 he began work as an assistant to Franz Theodor, only to abandon both home and career, at least for the time being, the following year.

Schubert's childhood had been dominated by music. He played the piano and the violin, and there was a family string quartet, in which he and two of his older brothers were joined by their father, an amateur cellist and allegedly the least proficient of the group. At school he had led the student orchestra and acquired close familiarity with contemporary repertoire. Above all, though, he w rote songs, settings of words by famous poets or by writers who had become his friends.

In 1816, at the age of 19, Schubert left home to live with his friend Franz von Schober. A year later he was home again at his father's new school. In 1818, after serving as music teacher to the daughters of Prince Esterhazy in Hungary, he returned to Vienna to share rooms with another friend, the poet Mayrhofer, later moving back once more to his father's school-house. He was to return briefly to Hungary for part of the summer of 1824, at a time when his health had been seriously impaired by the venereal infection that was to cause his death in 1828.

During his brief life Schubert enjoyed the friendship of a circle of young poets, artists and musicians, many of them dependent on other employment for a living. He never held any official position in the musical establishment, nor was he a virtuoso performer, as Mozart and Beethoven had been. The latter, who was to die one year before Schubert, had long been forced to relinquish his earlier career as a virtuoso, but kept and was kept by a group of rich patrons, and, increasingly, by his manipulation of music-publishers. Schubert, by the time of his death, seemed only to have started to make an impression on a wider public. Much of w hat he had written had proved eminently suitable for intimate social gatherings. His larger scale works were often to be played by amateurs, since he never had at his disposal a professional orchestra, nor, in general, had he or his friends the means to hire one. The only public concert devoted to his work was given in Vienna nine months before his death. The venture, supported generously by members of Schubert's circle, was financially successful and in the same year publishers had started to show a more active interest in music, much of which was to have a strong appeal in a period that saw a considerable development in domestic music-making.

Schubert's Symphony in B minor

was the work of 1822 and only two of the expected four movements were finished, with part of a scherzo. These movements were not played in Schubert's life-time, but were rediscovered 43 years later and given their first performance in Vienna in 1865. The manuscript had been given by Schubert to his friend Josef Huettenbrenner as a present for his brother Anseim in Graz. The latter had later arranged a piano duet version of the movements, which he and his brother played together. For years the manuscript remained in Anseim Huettenbrenner's possession, its existence only known to a few, until it came to the attention of the conductor Johann Herbeck.

Later writers have offered various explanations of the fragmentary nature of the symphony, none completely convincing. It has been suggested. improbably, that four movements were actually completed and sent to Anseim Huettenbrenner, who then lost two of the movements. More plausibly others have found a reason for not finishing the symphony in the composer's preoccupation with other work. Certainly Schubert could never be sure that larger scale works would ever be performed. It might be added that in 1822 Schubert contracted venereal disease and that the serious nature of this incurable disease and its probable fatal outcome affected him very deeply.

The fifth of Schubert's nine numbered symphonies was written in 1816 and was performed in October, a month after its composition, at the house of Otto Hatwig, a violinist in the Burgtheater orchestra. The musicians concerned were otherwise amateurs from the group that had been accustomed to meet at the house of Schubert's father. The music is in the tradition of what Schubert in his diary that year described as the magic sound of Mozart, the immortal. It is scored for flute, pairs of oboes, bassoons and horns, with strings, while the Unfinished Symphony was to make use of a larger orchestra that included clarinets, trombones, trumpets and drums. The first movement leads us through the charm of its principal melodic material to an excursion into stranger keys, until a recapitulation that opens with the first theme in the key of E fiat, before the original key of the movement is restored. There follows a slow movement that is in that essentially Viennese operatic idiom of which Mozart was the greatest exponent, succeeded by a lively Minuet and Trio in the keys of G minor and G major respectively. The symphony ends with a finale that contains all the dramatic contrasts that the customary form encourages.

Rosamunde, Fuerstin von Zypern, was staged at the Theater an der Wien in 1823. The play, by the blue-stocking Helmina von Chezy, was hastily written and was a dramatic disaster, receiving only two performances, its name remembered only because of the association with Schubert, who, with equal haste, provided music for it. The full score included choral items, which were well enough received by audiences. The Overture was borrowed from an earlier work, Alfonso and Estrella, although the so-called Rosamunde Overture was borrowed from Schubert's opera Die Zauberharfe. It is, however, the entr'acte and ballet music that have won lasting popularity. The Rosamunde theme was used in the following year as a theme for variations in the A minor String Quartet and later re-appeared once more in the B flat Impromptu.

The Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra

The Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra has benefited considerably from the work of its distinguished conductors. These included Vaclav Talich (1949 - 1952), Ludovit Rajter and Ladislav Slovak. The Czech conductor Libor Pesek was appointed resident conductor in 1981, and the present Principal Conductor is the Slovak musician Bystrik Rezucha. Zdenek Kosler has also had a long and distinguished association with the orchestra and has conducted many of its most successful recordings, among them the complete symphonies of Dvorak.

During the years of its professional existence the Slovak Philharmonic has worked under the direction of many of the most distinguished conductors from abroad, from Eugene Goossens and Malcolm Sargent to Claudio Abbado, Antal Dorati and Riccardo Muti.

The orchestra has undertaken many tours abroad, including visits to Germany and Japan, and has made a large number of recordings for the Czech Opus label, for Supraphon, for Hungaroton and, in recent years, for the Marco Polo and Naxos labels. These recordings have brought the orchestra a growing international reputation and praise from the critics of leading international publications.

Michael Halasz

Born in Hungary in 1938, Michael Halasz began his professional career as principal bassoonist in the Philharmonia Hungarica, a position he occupied for eight years, before studying conducting in Essen. His first engagement as a conductor was at the Munich Gaertnerplatz Theatre, where, from 1972to 1975, he directed all operetta productions. In 1975 he moved to Frankfurt as principal Kapellmeister under Christoph von Dohnanyi, working with the most distinguished singers and conducting the most impol1ant works of the operatic repertoire.

Engagements as a guest-conductor followed, and in 1977 Dohnanyi took him to the Staatsoper in Hamburg as principal Kapellmeister.

In 1978 Michael Halasz was appointed General Musical Director at the opera-house in Hagen, and there further developed his experience of the repertoire, while undertaking guest engagements, which included television appearances as conductor in English and German versions of the Gerard Hoffnung Music Festival, as well as work with the Philharmonia Hungarica, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and the Hilversum Radio Orchestra.

For the Marco Polo label, Michael Halasz has recorded works by Richard Strauss, Anton Rubinstein, Schreker and Miaskovsky and for Naxos works by Tchaikovsky, Rossini and Beethoven.

Disc 1

Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759, "Unfinished"

(more info)

Performed by: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra Bamberg Symphony Orchestra Munich Philharmonic Orchestra Symphony Nova Scotia Berlin Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra Philharmonia Cassovia Camerata Salzburg London Philharmonic Orchestra South West German Radio Symphony Orchestra, Baden-Baden Royal Danish Orchestra Ulster Orchestra New York Chamber Symphony Neue Orchester
Composed by: Franz Schubert
Conducted by: Kurt Masur Gunter Wand Jonathan Nott Michael Halasz Georg Tintner Johannes Wildner Hans Zender Roger Norrington Wilhelm Furtwangler Gerard Schwarz Vernon Handley Sandor Vegh Christoph Spering
Randall Ellis, oboe
David Singer, clarinet

Allegro moderato - 14:50
Andante con moto - 11:13

Symphony No. 5 in B flat major, D. 485

(more info)

Performed by: Collegium Musicum Basel Bamberg Symphony Orchestra Netherlands Chamber Orchestra Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra Northern Sinfonia Philharmonia Cassovia Camerata Salzburg South West German Radio Symphony Orchestra, Baden-Baden English Chamber Orchestra New York Chamber Symphony Neue Orchester
Composed by: Franz Schubert
Conducted by: Simon Gaudenz Jonathan Nott Gordan Nikolic Michael Halasz Geoffrey Simon Johannes Wildner Hans Zender Gerard Schwarz Heinrich Schiff Sandor Vegh Christoph Spering
Recording date: 6-8 June 1990

Rosamunde, D. 797

(more info)

Performed by: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra London Symphony Orchestra Philharmonia Cassovia Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra Linz Bruckner Orchestra Neue Orchester Cologne West German Radio Orchestra
Composed by: Franz Schubert
Conducted by: Klaus-Peter Hahn Peter Guth Michael Halasz Johannes Wildner Wilhelm Furtwangler Helmut Froschauer Christoph Spering Don Jackson
Martin Neubauer, narrator
Mechthild Georg, alto
Gert Westphal, narrator
Gisela Zoch, vocals
Gunda Aurich, narrator
Rainer Delventhal, narrator

Ballet Music, No. 2 - 7:47

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Flash 9 required. Click to download.

Composer(s):
Schubert, Franz

Conductor(s):
Halasz, Michael

Orchestra(s):
Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra

Label: Naxos Classics
UPC: 730099514521
Item Number: 8550145
Release Date: May 15, 1989