Schubert, Symphony No.9 in C major, D. 944

This concert featuring the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Bernstein was recorded live in June 1987 in the Congress Hall of the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

Schubert, Schwanengesang (Swan Song), D.957. Lieder Cycle based on poems by J.G. Seidl, H. Heine and L. Rellstab

The internationally acclaimed baritone Hermann Prey was born in Berlin in 1929. He made his breakthrough in 1956 as Figaro in the Vienna State Opera’s production of Rossini’s “Barber of Seville”. He has since performed at all of the world’s great opera houses and festivals. Hermann Prey has always loved lieder, especially the works of Franz Schubert. This inspired him to found the Schubertiade, a festival in Hohenems, Austria, entirely devoted to this composer’s works. He also established the New York Schubertiade in 1988. Hermann Prey and his accompanist Leonard Hokanson plumb the lyrical depths and heights of Schubert’s “Schwangengesang” with unequalled mastery.

Schubert, Symphony No.8 in B minor “Unfinished”, D. 759

Sir Georg Solti (1912-1997), one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, was a testament to the elegance and impeccable tastefulness of Central European music-making. Born in Budapest in 1912, he studied with Béla Bartók, Ernö von Dohnányi, Zoltán Kodály and Leo Weiner. In 1937, Toscanini chose him to be his assistant at the Salzburg Festival. After the war, Solti was appointed Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera. Further stations in his career were the Frankfurt Opera, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the London Philharmonic. His remarkable partnership with the Chicago Symphony began in 1954; he was named Music Director in 1969 and held this post for a phenomenal 22 years. He is credited with greatly extending and enhancing the orchestra’s worldwide reputation. Solti died in September 1997, just before his 85th birthday. Schubert began working on his Symphony No. 8 in October 1822, and finished the first two movements as well as the first measures of the Scherzo. But then he laid the work aside. It will never be known why he did not continue…¿Even as a torso, this mighty work continues to fascinate musicians and audiences alike with its stately, almost mysterious grandeur, romantic appeal and typically Viennese charm.

Schubert, Symphony No.6 in C major, D.589

Sir Georg Solti (1912-1997), one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, was a testament to the elegance and impeccable tastefulness of Central European music-making. Born in Budapest in 1912, he studied with Béla Bartók, Ernö von Dohnányi, Zoltán Kodály and Leo Weiner. In 1937, Toscanini chose him to be his assistant at the Salzburg Festival. After the war, Solti was appointed Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera. Further stations in his career were the Frankfurt Opera, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the London Philharmonic. His remarkable partnership with the Chicago Symphony began in 1954; he was named Music Director in 1969 and held this post for a phenomenal 22 years. He is credited with greatly extending and enhancing the orchestra’s worldwide reputation. Solti died in September 1997, just before his 85th birthday. Schubert wrote this work at the age of 21 for a small orchestra that had grown out of a string quartet that used to get together in Schubert’s apartment. It was not given its first public performance until December 1828, the month after Schubert’s death. Though the Sixth sometimes evokes Beethoven’s First Symphony, it also recalls the spirit of Haydn and even of Rossini, who was then very popular in Vienna.

Schubert, Symphony No.4 in C minor “Tragic”, D. 417

Schubert was only 19 years old when he composed his Symphony No. 4, to which he himself appended the name “Tragic.” The slow introduction is pervaded by a powerful feeling of melancholy, which gives way to the storminess of the Allegro vivace. Schubert scholars, who find the shadow of Beethoven throughout the “Tragic” Symphony, compare this theme to Beethoven’s C minor String Quartet Op. 18 and the Coriolanus Overture in the same key. A typically Schubertian, lyrical theme dominates the Andante movement. After a Menuetto and Trio, the closing Allegro presents a main theme, a stormy development and a resplendent conclusion that are related to the first movement. Nikolaus Harnoncourt was born in Berlin in 1929. His dissatisfaction with conventional interpretations of early music led him to found the Concentus Musicus with his wife Alice in 1953. The unusual, radically different musical style of the ensemble, combined with its insistence on using only historical instruments, quickly earned it a prominent reputation. Its international concert tours met with triumphal acclaim. In addition to leading his ensemble, Harnoncourt regularly conducts such prestigious orchestras as the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Concertgebouw Orkest Amsterdam, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and others. In contrast to the convention of playing the romanticised versions of Franz Schubert’s symphonies edited by Johannes Brahms, Harnoncourt seeks to revive the original character of the music as Schubert intended it. He goes back to Schubert’s original manuscripts, comparing and readjusting, ridding the score of all disfiguring changes made since it was written. The results of this restoration are striking: music that is full of drama and a dynamic range much broader than we are familiar with – Schubert in his purest form.