Schubert, Franz - Unfinished & Great Symphony - Rene Jacobs

Award-winning conductor René Jacobs and the B'Rock Orchestra complete their Schubert pentatone cycle with the composer's two most famous symphonies, the Unfinished and the Great. In his extensive liner notes, Jacobs develops a theory that the Symphony in B minor symphony was not left "unfinished," but was deliberately left unfinished because Schubert modeled its two parts analogously on Mein Traum (My Dream), an autobiographical two-part narrative written in 1822 at the same time as the symphony. The first half of Mein Traum recounts Schubert's mother's death and his troubled relationship with his father, while the second part moves into a magical, romantic world and ultimately leads to reconciliation with his father. On this recording, the two parts of the narrative precede the two parts of the Unfinished Symphony and are recited by Tobias Moretti. Jacobs argues that after the dream-inspired Unfinished, the Great C major Symphony, with its festive and sublime dimensions, served as a liberation for Schubert. The performance of these contrasting works forms a fitting apotheosis for a cycle that was conceived from the outset as a series of symphonic pairs. The musicians of the B'Rock Orchestra perform these works on period instruments, with transparent but fiery tones.