Schubert was eighteen when he wrote the Symphony no. 3 in D major, nineteen when he finished the Symphony no. 4 in c minor — and if you want to understand what that means, consider that Beethoven at nineteen was still in Bonn, still under Neefe’s tutelage, still years away from Vienna. Schubert was already in the city, already writing symphonies that worked, that sang, that moved. The Third is sunny and uncomplicated in the best possible sense; the Fourth reaches for something darker, something it doesn’t quite have the emotional vocabulary to sustain — yet the reaching itself is what makes it worth hearing.
David Zinman has spent decades making orchestras sound better than they thought they could, and his work with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich represents some of his finest recorded legacy. What he brings to these early Schubert symphonies is not a thesis. It’s instinct.
The Third opens with that teasing slow introduction — dotted rhythms, tentative woodwind figures, the whole thing poised between question and answer. Zinman lets the demisemiquaver runs in the winds breathe a little, gives them a spontaneous quality, as if the players are discovering the shape of the phrase in real time rather than executing a predetermined plan. It’s a small thing. It matters enormously. When the Allegro proper arrives — that clarinet skipping into the main theme like someone arriving late to a party and not remotely sorry about it — the music has already been warmed up from the inside.
The second theme on oboe, jocular and slightly self-satisfied, gets exactly the right measure of wit without vanity. Zinman’s development section toys with the clarinet’s dotted rhythm in a way that feels genuinely playful — not the manufactured charm you sometimes get from conductors who’ve decided in advance that this music is delightful and are going to prove it to you. The recapitulation brings that same second theme back on clarinet now, and something has shifted; it’s more courtly, more considered. Then the coda blows all that refinement away with a burst of brass that is purely, unashamedly festive.
Abbado’s 1987 disc with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe remains the obvious point of comparison, and it’s a very good one — more refined in texture, more consciously shaped. But there’s a kind of self-consciousness to it that occasionally tips into calculation. The introduction has a slightly managed quality. The oboe’s second theme steps out with a slightly actorly kick to it. Abbado’s ensemble is smaller, yet paradoxically Zinman’s larger Tonhalle forces achieve something closer to chamber transparency — the scaling is that neat.
The slow movement — an Allegretto intermezzo, really — is where Zinman earns his real distinction. He plays it with unassuming simplicity, which is harder than it sounds. The central clarinet solo floats with an ease that seems effortless and is absolutely not; when the flute takes it up, the first violins punctuate with a brightness that shades unexpectedly toward the soulful. These are eighteen-year-old emotions, yes — but emotions are emotions.
The Minuet crashes in with those sforzando openings, exuberant and slightly reckless, immediately softened by the whispered phrases that follow. The Trio, carried by oboe and bassoon, has the quality of a country dance heard through an open window — folk-like and yet exquisitely made. Abbado’s Trio has a little more lilt and suavity; his Minuet is weightier but also stiffer. The finale goes at a cracking pace, the articulation light at first, then giving way to real vigor, the two qualities trading off with the kind of easy interplay that is the whole personality of this symphony.
The Fourth is another matter. Schubert borrowed the nickname Tragic himself — unusual for him — and the C minor tonality announces Beethoven as clearly as a calling card left on the hall table. This was 1816, when the Beethoven of the Fifth and the Seventh was everywhere, impossible to escape, and a nineteen-year-old Viennese composer was going to absorb that influence whether he wanted to or not. The question is what Zinman does with the tension between Schubert’s lyric instincts and the Beethovenian architecture he’s trying to inhabit.
The answer, mostly, is that he trusts the music to resolve that tension itself — which it does, imperfectly, interestingly. The slow introduction here is genuinely weighty, and Zinman gives it real gravitas without turning it portentous. The Allegro vivace has forward momentum without bullying. The Andante, one of the most radiant things in the whole set of early symphonies, sings with unforced warmth; Zinman doesn’t over-sweeten it, which is exactly right — the movement earns its sentiment honestly. The Menuetto’s cross-rhythms clatter with good energy, and the finale, for all its attempts at Beethovenian drive, remains recognizably Schubertian — more singing than striving, which is not a failing.
These are not the symphonies that made Schubert’s reputation, because Schubert’s reputation in orchestral music rests on the last two, particularly the Symphony no. 9 in C major, and on the unfinished B-minor torso that became the most famous fragment in the repertoire. But the early symphonies — there are six completed ones before the Unfinished — deserve more than patronizing affection. Zinman plays them as if he believes they deserve it. That belief is audible in every phrase.
Strongly recommended.
