Schubert 1

Recording: WDR symphony Cologne - Gunter Wand Conducting

    Well this wasn't as pleasantly surprising as yesterday. It was by no means unpleasant, but was just kind of dull I guess. I ended up checking the years on them cause I was curious as to the what it came out around and was shocked to see that Beethoven 7 and 8 were premiered the year before this. Although to be fair Schubert was only 16 at the time and the classical style of early Beethoven would be easier to imitate. On the other hand, his first mass was the next year and sounds much more solid to me. Hmm... The symphony was written the same year as Wellington's Victory, so maybe it was just a bad year in general for music.

    The thing that sticks out about the first movement are the kind of awful trumpet parts. They are pitched so high at spots that they ruin the texture, especially given the light Classical era style that pervades the piece. Either that or they are out of tune on this recording something fierce. Other than that, the opening struck me as kind of boilerplate stately classical music but the construction of the piece was really solid, even if the transition back to the recapitulation was really jarring (in a non-intentional kind of way). All of the movements are very string dominant with winds for emphasis

    The middle two movements almost sound like contractual obligations. Like they were constructed to take the shape of a slow movement and a minuet and trio so they could be checked off and the piece could be called a symphony. I don't think the recording was doing the second movement any justice though, as the dynamics sound so flat and it starts so loud that I actually looked up the score to see if the slow movement was that clumsily edited. At least the version I looked at was supposed to start at a piano and I certainly didn't catch any of that kind of delicacy here. Again they aren't BAD, they just sound like themes were filled in to a symphonic movement generator and then placed in.

    The finale has a bit more life to it, but I also found myself getting kind of distracted by other things by this point in the symphony due to the middle movements. Trumpets are back in full force, although not quite as rough sounding as the first movement. Not sure there is more here than the other movements or if I'm just more tolerant of lively by the numbers music.

    I suppose they can't all be zingers!

Tomorrow: Paul Creston Symphony #1