Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks - BRSO

Leonard Bernstein conducts Schubert’s Great C Major Symphony

BR-KLASSIK 2CD 900229 BRSO, Leonard Bernstein © Foto Sessner

Franz Schubert’s Great C Major Symphony can be heard on this double CD from BR-KLASSIK in a live recording with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks conducted by Leonard Bernstein. CD 2 features a rehearsal recording in which Leonard Bernstein works through Schubert’s symphony with the BRSO.

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Leonard Bernstein conducted regularly in Munich from the 1980s onwards. It was during this time that he came to appreciate and love the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in particular. In October 1976, Bernstein had appeared with an all-Beethoven programme, and in 1983 he began a series of annual concerts with the orchestra. In 1987, he rehearsed Franz Schubert’s Great C Major Symphony, which was performed in the Congress Hall of the Deutsches Museum in Munich. This BR-KLASSIK CD features not only the live recording of this concert event but also a rehearsal recording on a bonus CD, “Conductors in Rehearsal,” which has been preserved in the sound archives of Bavarian Radio. Bernstein’s warmth and friendliness, as well as his astonishingly good German, are most impressive.

Franz Schubert most probably composed his Great C Major Symphony in Bad Gastein in the summer of 1825. Chronologically speaking, it is his eighth symphony, although it is still sometimes referred to as his ninth. It can be assumed that Schubert, who had witnessed the first performance of of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Vienna in 1824, wanted to be on an artistic level with his much older colleague.

He dedicated his work to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, in whose archives the score can be traced back to the end of 1826. However, it was not until 1839 – after Schubert’s death – that the history of its performance began, after Robert Schumann became aware of the work and organised its publication. In 1840, after the posthumous first performance by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy on March 21, 1839, Schumann formulated one of the most famous quotations about Schubert’s symphony, that of its “heavenly length”. Because of the value the composer himself attached to it, and to distinguish it from the much shorter Sixth Symphony in the same key (therefore often referred to as the “Little C major”), it was titled “The Great”.

The live recording was made on June 13 and 14, 1987 in the Congress Hall of the Deutsches Museum in Munich. In the rehearsal recording “Conductors in Rehearsal – Leonard Bernstein rehearses with the BRSO in German”, Friedrich Schloffer (narrator) and Johannes Ritzkowsky (horn) can be heard alongside Bernstein.

BR-KLASSIK 2CD 900229

CD 1
Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828)
Symphony No. 8 in C major, D 944 “Great C Major Symphony” 

Live recording: Munich, Congress Hall of the Deutsches Museum , 13.-14.06.1987

Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Leonard Bernstein
Conductor

Total time: 50’27 min.

CD 2
“Conductors in Rehearsal” – Leonard Bernstein rehearses with the BRSO (in German)

Friedrich Schloffer, Leonard Bernstein
speaker
Johannes Ritzkowsky
horn
Bernhard Neuhoff Editorial and manuscript
Karlheinz Steinkeller Implementation

Total time: 62’28 min.

  • Leonard Bernstein and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra perform Franz Schubert’s “Great” C major Symphony
  • Live recording of concerts given in June 1987 in the Congress Hall of the Deutsches Museum in Munich
  • In the rehearsal recording (“Conductors in Rehearsal – Leonard Bernstein rehearses with the BRSO in German”), Bernstein’s interpretation of Schubert comes to life in German

Leonard Bernstein conducts Schubert