Schubert, My Dream – Schubert’s “Great” C major symphony as a film by Norbert Beilharz

We see Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 9 (The Great C-major Symphony) in Vienna's Musikvereinssaal. Filming him is Norbert Beilharz. But what he is filming are also the thoughts which listening to the music arouses in him. Beilharz has atempted to transform the symphony into images. To emphasize the subjective nature of his vision, Beilharz conjures up an old man who, while attending the concert, is overtaken by memories. Schubert's music evokes in him moments of joy and sadness, happiness and desperation, love and pain - all as changeable as the seasons. Harnoncourt, the member of the audience and his memories are woven into a triangle with such a dramatic tension that even Harnoncourt's gestures seem to be in interplay with the old man's images of the past. "My Dream" is the device which appears at the beginning of a story written in 1822 and attributed to Franz Schubert. In 1839, a signed manuscript was given to Robert Schumann by Franz's brother Ferdinand Schubert. Norbert Beilharz chose the device to be the title of his filmed essay on Schubert's Symphony No. 9 in C major.