A “Complete” Schubert Symphony Project

Ruine im Riesengebirge, painted by Caspar David Friedrich around 1834 (album cover image provided by Naxos of America)

Almost exactly a month ago the German label cpo released a four-CD album of music by Franz Schubert entitled Complete Symphonies & Fragments. Michi Gaigg conducts the L’Orfeo Barockorchester, which she founded in 1996. Over the last two decades the orchestra has established itself as one of the leading ensembles in historically informed performance practices and has produced over 40 CD releases. The selections in this album are based on the Neue Schubert-Ausgabe (NSA, New Schubert Edition), a publication project by Bärenreiter that began in 1963, is projected to consist of 101 volumes, and is expected to conclude in 2027.

The original catalog compiled by Otto Erich Deutsch lists eight symphonies, one fragment, and two sets of sketches. The “unfinished” symphony (D. 759 in B minor, consisting of an Allegro moderato, an Andante con moto, and a fragment of a scherzo), is included in that set of eight. In the original publication by Breitkopf & Härtel, what is now D. 944 was listed as Schubert’s seventh symphony. However, because it was composed after D. 759, one used to encounter some recordings that listed it as the seventh and others that listed it as the ninth. These days those numbers have been overhauled. D. 759 is now considered the seventh symphony, and D. 944 is the eighth. That is how they are listed in the new cpo release.

On the other hand, the only fragment from the original Deutsch catalog that is included is D. 729, the first 115 measures of a symphony that was never continued or completed. The other six fragments on this new release come from NSA, assigned number-letter pairs to interleave properly with the chronological sequence of the original Deutsch numbers. They are all quite short and break off “in midstream.” This makes for a somewhat frustrated listening experience, making them a perfect example for a quote that may or may not have originated with Abraham Lincoln:

Well, for people who like that kind of thing, I think that is just about the kind of thing they’d like.

More important is the listening experience that Gaigg’s ensemble offers for the symphonies now numbered from one to eight. She tends to favor brisk tempos, which can be delivered with compelling results by the reduced numbers of a historically-informed ensemble. These days, D. 944 tends to attract the most attention, at least among the conductors performing in Davies Symphony Hall; and interest tends to decline monotonically as one progresses through the earlier symphonies in chronological order. For my own part, I feel that the earliest of those symphonies deserve more attention; and Gaigg’s interpretations go a long way towards reinforcing my personal opinions.