Schubert completed his Symphony No. 5 in B-flat in 1816, during the period when he was working as a teaching assistant at a school in Vienna, taking private composition lessons twice a week with Antonio Salieri, and writing mountains of music that had yet to be seen or heard by anyone outside his private circle. Aside from a private reading that fall, the symphony sat dormant until long after Schubert’s death, with a first performance in 1841 and a published score only appearing in 1885. Of all of Schubert’s symphonies, finished and unfinished, this is the only one that omits clarinets, trumpets and timpani from the orchestration, essentially turning back the clock to the symphonic customs of the 1780s. Schubert’s crisp musical material matches the economical scoring, with traces of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven infusing the work of a young man who was destined, at least in his afterlife, to join the pantheon of Viennese greats.

Aaron Grad ©2019