Franz Schubert

[Scion7]

Did you get that fact from Wikipedia?
Remember, even Wiki states at the start of their online 'encyclopedia' that it is not reliable (anyone can edit it, anyone can misrepresent the Sources they use to write it, there are plenty of miscreants creating false information and pushing their own agendas on there with the references only checked by the dedicated few.)

Was it from an album sleeve not/booklet?

While possible, that number seems a bit high, and also how was it determined in the first place?
Thousands of films exist - I strongly doubt anyone actually did a survey.

I've heard Schubert's music in several movies, but I would be wary of a six-hundred films claim.
Anyway, that's my 2 bob on it.

[Spineur]

Did you get that fact from Wikipedia?
Remember, even Wiki states at the start of their online 'encyclopedia' that it is not reliable (anyone can edit it, anyone can misrepresent the Sources they use to write it, there are plenty of miscreants creating false information and pushing their own agendas on there with the references only checked by the dedicated few.)

Was it from an album sleeve not/booklet?

While possible, that number seems a bit high, and also how was it determined in the first place?
Thousands of films exist - I strongly doubt anyone actually did a survey.

I've heard Schubert's music in several movies, but I would be wary of a six-hundred films claim.
Anyway, that's my 2 bob on it.

I got it from Imdb:  Franz Schubert is listed as a film music composer, believe it or not.  601 sounds like a lot, but if a Schubert tune is enough to count, its believable.  Anyway, there has bee so many movies produced..  Just for the French movies, I can cite 20 with some Schubert in them right off the top of my head.  That alone tells me that Schubert has had an immense impact on me....

[Mandryka]

Does anyone have a copy of Maynard Solomon's "Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini" that they could let me have?

[jlaurson]

Latest on Forbes:


Classical CD Of The Week: Winterreise Threesome

[SurprisedByBeauty]

Latest on Forbes:

Beethoven And Schubert Almost On Original Location: A REsounding Success



Schubert's Great C major Symphony[2] is a challenge for a "REsound" project, since the only place it 'sounded', in Schubert's time, was in his head...

[SurprisedByBeauty]

The 10 Best Classical Recordings Of 2016
#2 Ives: http://bit.ly/Forbes_Best_Classical_Recordings_2016_New


Immerseel's "Schubertiade"

[SurprisedByBeauty]

Classical CD Of The Week: Schubert At His Secret Best With Four Hands

[SurprisedByBeauty]

Review: Oh, Only The Best Schöne Müllerin Ever!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenslaurson/2017/12/05/review-oh-only-the-best-schone-mullerin-ever/#535b615f632c

and a review of a fascinating concert:

Review: Visiting Nazgûl - An Evening Of Late Schumann And Darker Schubert

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenslaurson/2017/12/01/review-visiting-nazgul-an-evening-of-late-schumann-and-darker-schubert/#7d6043f623a9

[SurprisedByBeauty]

Trout Mutter



Review: A Dress, Two Stars And A Trout "Electric-Eclectic"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenslaurson/2018/01/11/review-a-dress-two-stars-and-a-trout-electric-eclectic/#6f8aff6d3132

[Brian]

Is there any documentation or analysis on why Schubert went so flute-crazy in his Sixth Symphony?

[Baron Scarpia]

Did you get that fact from Wikipedia?
Remember, even Wiki states at the start of their online 'encyclopedia' that it is not reliable (anyone can edit it, anyone can misrepresent the Sources they use to write it, there are plenty of miscreants creating false information and pushing their own agendas on there with the references only checked by the dedicated few.)

Was it from an album sleeve not/booklet?

While possible, that number seems a bit high, and also how was it determined in the first place?
Thousands of films exist - I strongly doubt anyone actually did a survey.

I've heard Schubert's music in several movies, but I would be wary of a six-hundred films claim.
Anyway, that's my 2 bob on it.

Seems like a claim so insignificant it is not worth lying about.

[SurprisedByBeauty]

Classical CD Of The Week: Krystian Zimerman's New Schubert

Like a decennial musical Santa, Krystian Zimerman drops a solo record every ten-ish years. The anticipation is understandably great, the result, in this case, too!

[Mandryka]

First movement, Allegro [of 958]: the first bars are similar to Beethoven's Thirty-two Variations in C minor (eight bars of implacable logic). But Schubert, in bar 7, immobilises the harmonic situation, and then sets out on another path, attracted, as he so often is, by unexpected prospects, before belatedly concluding the phrase at bar 21. The apparent serenity of the second theme, on the other hand, is worn down by inner resignation, yielding in an almost physiological sense. A subsequent variant of it is fierce and sombre, an effect of the peculiar rhythmic obsessiveness that dominates so many sections of these sonatas. This is followed by a momentarily acquiescent epilogue. The development does not develop at all: we get lost in the void of creeping chromatic motifs, suggesting the shiver provoked by a series of gusts of wind. Finally, the coda seems to be a subdued acceptance of the unacceptable.

First movement, Allegro [of 959]: this might bear the title of a famous composition by Charles Ives, The Unanswered question. The joyous, highly assertive incipit is misleading: the formal logic of what follows it defies immediate understanding. It proceeds by interruptions and harmonic digressions, including the second theme, which begins in gentle, questioning fashion, but whose concluding section, after various unexpected vicissitudes, has something stagnant about it. As in the previous sonata, the coda is a metaphorical figure of the acceptance of an insoluble situation, creating, this time, a complex layer of rhythms, at once mobile and static; the concluding arpeggios lead to an intense silence.

First movement, Assai moderato [of 960]: a constant movement, alternating quavers, triplets and semiquavers, creates a sense of perennial flow, significantly halted only by a few interruptions of a completely different character, primarily by a mysterious trill as early as the eighth bar, a kind of clamour that generates silence after it (I think of Freud's concept of 'the uncanny'). It explodes with virulence in the two bars that precede the ritornello, and will reverberate, irrepressibly, on at least ten further occasions; its final appearance will be at the end of the conciliatory epilogue. For the rest, Schubert deliberately proceeds as if groping his way along, allowing himself to be guided above all by concatenations of small intervals, touching on almost the entire range of keys, playing with the risk of losing the thread of the narrative.

My bold.

The ideas in these paragraphs, all by Alexander Lonquich, seem to me to be true to his performances in the 2018 release, with the caveat that I've only listened to 958/I once. They seem to me to present a wholly original view of Schubert, and one which makes his long form music more interesting and original than I had previously imagined possible. Gone is the image of a c 19 romantic songsmith with a  facility for  creating memorable melodies. We have someone who is pioneering what I think are very unromantic, indeed un-pre -romantic ideas like

Losing the narrative (Robbe Grillet)
Stagnation
Digression (Finegan's Wake)
Groping along (in the dark?) (Beckett)
No development at all (Claude Simon - Jardin des plantes)
Acceptance of the unacceptable (like Beckett?)

Lonquich, I suggest, has made Schubert a bit more our contemporary.

[Jo498]

But "the image of a c 19 romantic songsmith with a  facility for  creating memorable melodies" is more like 1950s liner notes stuff and was already obsolete even then in the views of many musicians or critics. Even if one treats Schnabel and Erdmann as somewhat isolated pioneers (did Edwin Fischer play/record a sonata or only the Wanderer and shorter pieces?) by the late 60s or early 1970s there were sufficiently many recordings of Schubert, including the piano sonatas, that took them seriously, sometimes as serious and dark as it gets (e.g. Richter).
So I don't think these comments are wrong but they have been part and parcel of the Schubert reception for at least 4 decades or more, I'd think.

And while it is more obvious in literature and somewhat later music (mostly Schumann) some of these modern/contemporary features are to some extent clearly present in early 19th century art. There are fragments, there are extremely convoluted digressive writings (like Schumann's favorite Jean Paul) is a fascination with drugs and madness (Hoffmann, de Quincey etc.), suicide (Kleist). Including famous poets like Hoelderlin and musicians like Schumann actually ending their live in the psych ward.

[Mandryka]

I'm sure your right. I mean I don't know enough about romanticism to comment (I'm about to embark with a certain trepidation on a study of Nerval with some friends.)

Re interpretation, Richter was clearly a pioneer of something in the long form piano music, but I have the impression, and maybe I'm wrong, that his approach - slow, dramatic - hasn't been specially well received, people talk about Richter, Afanassiev, Lonquich as if they're eccentrics, outliers from the orthodox way of playing which is more rooted in the approach that Schnabel pioneered.  And Schnabel's Schubert is the music of an innocent songsmith isn't it.

Erdmann  is a different kettle of fish, but in terms of reception not very influential I suspect.

[Brahmsian]

Could anyone suggest recordings of Schubert's Unfinished (call it the 7th or 8th, which ever you prefer), where you can actually hear the beginning with the strings?  Or are they all literally played ppppppppppppppppppppppppppp?

I find I have to listen to the beginning with the stereo full blast.

[SurprisedByBeauty]

Could anyone suggest recordings of Schubert's Unfinished (call it the 7th or 8th, which ever you prefer), where you can actually hear the beginning with the strings?  Or are they all literally played ppppppppppppppppppppppppppp?

I find I have to listen to the beginning with the stereo full blast.

Ballot's recent recording Vienna comes to mind: http://a-fwd.to/1FcbhY0 Tempered and Viennese lightness without going in for a race to the fastest common denominator. Neo-traditional, if you will.

[André]

I've finally got through a complete symphonies set where every single entry is a winner in my book:



I have individual favourites for all of them, but this bunch of performances by Suitner and the superb Staatskapelle, Berlin Orchestra is very near their equal. The sound is the best I've heard, too. As a set, among more than a dozen I know this is tops.

[Brahmsian]

Ballot's recent recording Vienna comes to mind: http://a-fwd.to/1FcbhY0 Tempered and Viennese lightness without going in for a race to the fastest common denominator. Neo-traditional, if you will.

Thank you for the recommendation!

[SurprisedByBeauty]

I'm undertaking my next discography survey -- this time of Schubert Symphonies.

Here's what I have for the 60/70s. If anyone can confirm dates (earliest / last), that'd be great.

1964 Denis Vaughan/ (RCA Victrola) (nur LP)   
1969 Menuhin/Menuhin Festival Orchestra (EMI)   
1970 Maag/Philharmonia Hungarica (VOX)   
1963-71 Kertesz/Wiener Phil (Decca)   
1962-72 Böhm/Berliner Phil (DG)    
1967-72 Sawallisch/Staatskapelle Dresden (Philips)   
1978 Mehta/Israel Philharmonic (Decca, CDs: Australian Eloquence)   
1970er Karajan/Berliner Phil (EMI)