Schubert wrote nine overtures, give or take how you count them, and the world has largely ignored all but one. That’s a shame, and also, if you think about it, entirely understandable.
The neglect isn’t mysterious. Schubert composed most of these pieces as curtain-raisers for stage works that failed — failed promptly, failed completely, and in some cases never even reached the stage in his lifetime. Die Zwillingsbrüder got six performances. Fierrabras got none. When the operas disappeared, the overtures went with them, buried under the rubble of theatrical misfortune. And the few concert overtures Schubert wrote without operatic attachment labored under titles of almost aggressive blandness — Overture in d major, Overture in e minor — the musical equivalent of a brown paper bag.
Yet here is the paradox: several of these pieces are genuinely fine, and the opera overtures especially repay attention in ways their stage careers would never have predicted.
The overture to Fierrabras — that grandly misconceived opera on which Schubert squandered so much invention in 1823, the very year his health collapsed — is the most impressive work in this collection. Its slow introduction carries real weight, the kind of ceremonial gravity that puts you in mind of late Mozart, specifically the Don Giovanni overture without the terror. The Allegro arrives with rhythmic snap and purpose, and the tuttis hit hard. You hear here a Schubert who has absorbed the Viennese classical inheritance completely and is pressing against its walls. The overture to Alfonso und Estrella — written first, then reassigned to Rosamunde before that work acquired its own overture from an even earlier piece — shares this quality of symphonic seriousness. These are not throwaways. They are, in their compressed way, small masterworks.
The two Italian-style overtures are a different matter, and a fascinating one. Schubert wrote them in 1817, when he was twenty and Rossini’s invasion of Vienna was at its most intoxicating. Everyone was writing Rossini imitations; it was practically a genre. What’s interesting is how much Schubert remains himself even while genuflecting. The slow introduction to the overture in c major is pure Schubert — that particular lyrical warmth, the harmonies that seem to breathe — and then the fast section snaps into something altogether more Italian, with Rossini crescendos building in the lower strings before the full orchestra piles on. The overture in d major is less successful at this fusion, but it has its own interest: substantial chunks of it reappeared, reworked, in the Zauberharfe overture three years later, which tells you something about Schubert’s workshop habits and his willingness to mine his own earlier ideas.
Which brings us to the famous one. The overture everyone knows as “the” Rosamunde overture is actually the overture to Die Zauberharfe, a melodrama from 1820, pressed into service for Rosamunde in 1823 because Schubert apparently wrote the actual Rosamunde overture — what we now call the Alfonso und Estrella piece — in too much of a hurry. The slow introduction here unfolds pleasantly without quite commanding the room, and Christian Benda and the Prague Sinfonia take a moment to find their footing. But the Allegro, once it arrives, has genuine charm — strings with a light, almost feathery articulation on the theme, then the brass cutting through with real brightness.
Benda’s ensemble, an expanded descendant of the old conductorless Prague Chamber Orchestra, plays with clean intonation and decent ensemble. The Schubert scoring is thicker than you might expect — he was writing for theater orchestras with real brass sections — and Benda handles the dynamic contrasts with some authority. The Die Verschworenen overture gets a cheerful, well-paced reading; the Die Zwillingsbrüder overture, that remarkably concentrated little piece that keeps slipping toward the minor like a man unable to keep his footing on ice, generates genuine atmosphere.
Where the performances fall slightly short is in that final degree of rhythmic tension — the quality that separates a good reading from a memorable one. Abbado’s old Deutsche Grammophon recordings of the Schubert overtures had a crackle and urgency that Benda rarely matches. There are moments here, particularly in the Italian-style overtures, where the bustling semiquaver passages feel efficient rather than exhilarating.
Still. For anyone who wants a complete survey of this neglected corner of Schubert’s output — and this is the complete survey, all nine works on a single disc — the Prague Sinfonia serves the music honestly and with evident affection. The program itself makes the strongest argument for listening. Fierrabras and Alfonso und Estrella deserve to be known. The Die Zwillingsbrüder overture is a small gem. And even the less distinguished pieces carry that harmonic fingerprint — those sudden sidesteps into remote keys, those melodies that seem to ache slightly even in their happiest moments — that makes Schubert always, unmistakably, himself.
Recommended, with that caveat about voltage.
