SCHUBERT: Symphony No. 5 in B-flat, D. 485; Symphony No.
8 in B minor, D. 759 (“Unfinished”); Overtures in the Italian Style, D. 590 and D.
591. Royal Concertgebouw Ensemble/Nikolaus Harnoncourt. APEX 0927 40840-2 [69:29]
There’s something bracingly unsentimental about Harnoncourt’s approach to Schubert that makes you reconsider music you thought you knew.
This Fifth Symphony—so often presented as a genial Mozartean exercise, all sunshine and Biedermeier charm—emerges here with edges showing. The opening "Allegro" has bite. String tone is lean, almost ascetic, and the Concertgebouw’s legendary warmth gets reined in considerably.
Which is precisely the point. Harnoncourt never lets you forget that this eighteen-year-old composer was living in the — shadow of Beethoven’s middle period, that the Classical inheritance was already problematic by 1816. The "Andante" con moto—and he actually observes that “con moto,” not dawdling into sentimentality—has genuine gravity.
Those woodwind exchanges in the development aren’t decorative. They’re searching, sometimes anxious. The "Menuetto" drives forward with an energy that borders on the unsettling, and the "finale"’s supposedly innocent gaiety keeps threatening to tip into something darker.
The recorded sound, captured in the Concertgebouw in November 1992, is exemplary—clear without clinical dryness, spacious without losing detail. You hear everything: the timpani’s discreet commentary, the horn calls that seem to come from just outside — the frame, the way Schubert’s string writing constantly shifts between homophony and the most subtle contrapuntal touches. But it’s the Unfinished that really justifies this release.
Harnoncourt resists the temptation to turn those opening cellos and — well — basses into a Romantic swoon. The pulse is steady, almost inexorable, and — well — when the second theme arrives—that melody we’ve all heard a thousand times—it sounds newly vulnerable, exposed in ways that more cushioned readings conceal. The development section builds with cumulative power rather than episodic drama.
Nothing is underlined. Nothing needs to be. The second movement…
well, here’s where Harnoncourt’s refusal to prettify pays the richest dividends. That walking bass line maintains its tread throughout, and the whole movement has a processional quality that makes the outbursts all the more shattering. The Concertgebouw winds—those gorgeous Dutch winds—play with such precision and character that you notice harmonic details that usually get swallowed in more generalized lyricism.
The Italian Overtures make more than just filler—D. 590 in particular has real theatrical flair, and Harnoncourt brings out its Rossinian wit without letting it turn into mere pastiche. D.
591 is slightly less inspired, perhaps, but it’s done with such commitment that you don’t mind. This disc comes from Harnoncourt’s complete Schubert symphony cycle, and if the rest maintains this level of insight and execution, it deserves wider currency. At super-budget price on the Apex label, it’s almost perverse not to investigate.
You can almost hear the rosin dust settling on the strings.
These aren’t comfortable performances—they won’t provide sonic balm after a difficult day. But they’ll make you think about Schubert differently, make you hear things you’d stopped noticing. That seems worth the price of admission.
Strongly recommended, particularly for listeners who think they’ve outgrown these works.
