The Complete Schubert Symphonies Vol. 1-4 [DSD Bundle]

The Complete Schubert Symphonies DSD Bundle offers NativeDSD listeners a generous 30% discount when you buy all 4 albums in this symphonic cycle performed by Jan Willem de Vriend conducting the Residentie Orkest The Hague from Challenge Classics.

NativeDSD Bundles are a mini collection of DSD albums created by the NativeDSD team that brings the works of a special artist, music label or musical genre to your personal library. Better yet, when you buy both of the albums in this bundle NativeDSD gives you a special 30% OFF discounted price on the full bundle. Expanding your musical horizons and collection while saving money at the same time. Each DSD Bundle is a music opportunity and adventure we urge you to explore!

Volume 1

Schubert composed his first five symphonies while still a teenager, but they represent just one facet of his prodigious fluency. Some of his musical ideas bear a family resemblance to certain themes from Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, but already his own musical character is evident.

He began his Second Symphony in December 1814 and had finished it by March 24th of the following year. He completed the Fourth Symphony in about three to four weeks during April 1816. We should not read too much into the Fourth Symphony’s “Tragic” appendage, added by Schubert as an afterthought. It may be merely an example of the flippant comments which he wrote on some of his youthful scores, but nevertheless, the symphony has more gravitas than its predecessors. Schubert also includes a second pair of horns to enrich the texture. This is the only piece of non-programmatic music to which he gave a descriptive title.

Volume 2

While offering little suggestion of the symphonic mastery he would attain less than a decade later, the First Symphony, influenced by Mozart’s last symphonies and completed in October 1813, is a remarkable achievement.

Schubert composed his Third Symphony over a period of about two months, completing the work in July 1815. The Third Symphony is generally characterized by an increased rhythmic intensity, at times bordering on obsession. We may well think of Schubert primarily as a wonderful melodist, but driving, sometimes overpowering rhythm is just as strong a feature of many of his greatest works.

The question of why Schubert left this B minor symphony unfinished has continued to exercise scholars. The most convincing explanation is that he simply found himself unable to continue on the same exalted level and resigned himself to leaving the symphony as it was – two movements of breath-taking quality and imagination. There is no evidence that he ever wished, in his remaining six years, to return to the work, or that he regarded it as “unfinished”. Beethoven’s influence on the historic development of the symphony was staggering. His own examples, widening the expressive range of the genre, opened up a new world. Against this background, Schubert conceived a work of much greater poetry, drama and profundity than he had attempted in his previous symphonies.

Over-familiarity may well have blunted our appreciation of this symphony, which is strikingly original from almost every aspect. Apart from the concentrated, expressive quality, there is also a greatly enhanced sense of tone-color, with much richer sonorities, and a new spaciousness.

Volume 3

After completing the symphonic cycles of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, Jan Willem de Vriend is now undertaking Schubert’s complete symphonic output with Residentie Orkest The Hague. This is the third volume in that series featuring Schubert’s Symphony No. 9.

For about 150 years it was believed that Schubert composed his Ninth Symphony in 1828, not long before his death but, musical scholarship being a continuous process, this theory was later disproved. It was discovered in the late 20th century that in fact he composed most of this work three years earlier and revised it in 1826 and 1827. Following a period of poor health, 1825 was a better year for Schubert, while his finances were also improved.

Schubert never heard a single performance of many of his works, including this great symphony. When it was rehearsed in 1827 at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, the string players complained that passages in which a rhythmic figure is obsessively repeated, especially in the finale, were unplayable.

In May 1824, Schubert attended the first performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Beethoven revolutionized symphonic form, expanding its expressive range enormously, his Ninth Symphony being conceived on a much grander scale than any previous symphony. Schubert was just one of many composers influenced by Beethoven’s achievements.

Many scholars have suggested the many ways in which Schubert was influenced by Beethoven, but the most extraordinary aspect of Schubert’s mature music is its complete individuality. The compositional techniques, the handling of tonality and structure, and the orchestral sound of these two contemporaries have little in common. Schubert’s own profound originality is more striking for its emergence at a time when Beethoven’s impact on the development of the symphony was so revolutionary and far-reaching.

Volume 4

The fourth and final volume in Jan Willem de Vriend’s survey of Schubert’s symphonies. Covering Schubert Symphonies Nos 5 and 6 with the Residentie Orkest the Hague on Challenge Classics.

Schubert’s musical ideas at this time sometimes bear a family resemblance to themes by Mozart, Haydn or Beethoven, but nevertheless his own style was already precociously developed. One would not mistake his Fifth Symphony of 1816 for the work of any other composer, though its difference in character from the Fourth Symphony is equally striking. Here, omitting clarinets, trumpets or timpani, Schubert uses a reduced orchestration in comparison with his previous symphonies.

Schubert began his Sixth Symphony in October 1817 and completed it in the following February. The Sixth Symphony represents a sideways step in Schubert’s symphonic development, a digression which may be explained by the phenomenal popularity of Rossini. At this time Rossini’s operas were being received with tremendous enthusiasm in Vienna. Keen to earn a living from his compositions, Schubert now emulated aspects of the style which was enjoying such vogue.

The Overture in D in the Italian Style dates from November 1817. In common with the Sixth Symphony, it reflects the influence of Rossini. According to Heinrich Kreissle, Schubert’s first biographer, this work was the result of a wager which he made with some friends that he could easily compose “in the Italian style”.

Jan Willem de Vriend, Conductor
Residentie Orkest The Hague