Schubert's Unfinished Symphony

[Marcus]

Brian Newbould reconstructed Schubert's Unfinished Symphony in 4 movements using fragments from an incomplete 3rd movement, and music from Rosamunde for the 4th.
After the profound original first two movements, I find this realisation very unconvincing.
In 1928, on the anniversary of Schubert's death, Columbia Records conducted a worlwide competition for the completion of the symphony. It was won by English composer,Frank Merrick, who it was reported, produced a successful copy of Schubert's style. It was recorded on LP by Columbia.
I am wondering if it has been recorded since. Perhaps, here is an opportunity for Mike Dutton, Dutton Laboratories, (& please  include Merrick's own symphony.)

[Hofrat]

Schubert did not finish his 7th symphony in E nor his 10th symphony in D.  Both have been realized/completed by Professor Brian Newbould to rave reviews.  They both show a new direction Schubert was taking.  I have both and they are most interesting. 

[TerraEpon]

There's also a pair of unnumbered ones, both are quite enjoyable (one of them has an early version of the scherzo from the 9th).

There's one more REALLy early one, that I don't believe has been recorded, alas.

[Hofrat]

Yes, that scherzo it absolutely stunning.  It is a shame that Schbert could not use it.  There is a recording of his 10th in which the scherzo was inserted in order make the 10th a 4-movement piece.  In my opinion, this threw the balance out of whack.  I prefer my recording of Schbert 10th in the original 3-movement format.

[Rob H]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07GVSKBGL/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This is out in November and as you can see it includes several Merrick rarities, the Schubert completion amongst them. A few other little piano rarities are there as well.

[Alan Howe]

How good are the orchestra/conductor involved?

[Gareth Vaughan]

Well, I recall that the standard on a lot of Rare Recorded Edition LPs was only moderate - and certainly their pressings could be remarkably noisy in terms of clicks and pops. One used to be able to buy them from the eccentric Michael Thomas's extraordinary Aladdin's cave of a shop in Lymington Road, off the Finchley Road, in London. Does anyone remember Michael?

[semloh]

Good question, Alan. I assume the orchestra is this one here: https://www.st-cecilia.org.uk/  which - today at least - receives excellent reviews as a superb non-professional orchestra. Trevor Harvey's career is briefly described on Wikipedia, and his main role was conductor, throughout the 1960s, of the British Youth Orchestra.
As to this Merrick Legacy set, I suppose there must be reviews of the original performances - somewhere!

[eschiss1]

Marcus: Frank Merrick won the Columbia competition? That's going to come as news to a lot of Atterberg fans. Admittedly, Atterberg only won after the terms of the competition were changed to allow works in some way or other inspired _by_ Schubert like Schmidt's 3rd, Brian's 1st, and many others (and even then, Weingartner's 6th symphony, one of whose movements is a completion of the scherzo of the Schubert 8th, did not iirc do so well - still, heavy competition and all that). Maybe Merrick won one of the regional awards, like Schmidt did iirc? (Atterberg was international finalist, but there were a number of regional awards. Someone wrote a dissertation about the competition, entrants and winners that I had an opportunity to briefly skim once, I seem to recall, but I don't recall who or for what organization or etc.)

[Ilja]

I thought that by now it was fairly well established that the finale of Schubert's 8th survives in its entirety as the 1st Entr'acte from Rosamunde, which he gave to Baroness von Chezy after she endlessly pursued him looking for music to accompany her play. It is in the right key, has the same ensemble and even sounds right for a symphonic Schubert finale. And I love it. The scherzo is a somewhat different matter, of course, needing more reconstruction.

The reception of finalizations of the "Unvollendete" offer an interesting insight into what education and experience do to aesthetic appreciation. I once heard an interview with Georg Tintner (a conductor I admire in other repertoire), who claimed that Schubert somehow "felt the scherzo to be inferior", or words to that effect. Of course, conductors (and other performers) have a vested interest in defending existing concert practices, so they often (not always!) tend to pour disproportionate praise on the canon. But anyone withe even a fleeting interest in classical music has been exposed to the first two movements of the 8th symphony, and will have been told how brilliant they are, so we need to take that into account when listening to that music in combination with the other two movements (reconstructed or not). And it turns out to be very difficult to give them a fair chance.

[chriskh]

Most people in the UK remember Trevor Harvey as a longstanding and rather waffly (but sometimes helpful) reviewer in Gramophone. The general tenor of his reviews was inclined to be "I'm a conductor really". I doubt if enough recorded material exists to judge him in his preferred role. The original recording of the two Merrick movements was conducted by Stanford Robinson, who was certainly an excellent practitioner, but the sound would be very old indeed.

[TerraEpon]

I thought that by now it was fairly well established that the finale of Schubert's 8th survives in its entirety as the 1st Entr'acte from Rosamunde, which he gave to Baroness von Chezy after she endlessly pursued him looking for music to accompany her play. It is in the right key, has the same ensemble and even sounds right for a symphonic Schubert finale. And I love it.

From what I gather, there was never any proof to that, just as you say, it fits.

[chriskh]

Somehow the system divided "conductor" in my previous message to "con ductor", a hilarious variant which of course I didn't mean

[Alan Howe]

I've corrected the error.

[gprengel]

I'd like to present to you my version of the Scherzo and the finale of the "Unfinished". If you think that the Unfinished is complete and perfect as it is then you are right, but then you can please consider these movements just on their own...

I orchestrated the main part from Schubert's piano reduction and completed the Trio of which only the begining was sketched by Schubert with a few bars  of the melodic line. I love this Scherzo - it is powerful, passionate and melodious !

Regarding the Finale I also believe as others that Schubert took the original finale and used it for the balett music Rosamunde as this work lacks the drive and the flow to be fitting for a symphonic finale. Schubert changed the original title "Allegro moderato" (like the 1st movement) of this work later on even to "Allegro molto moderato" in the Rosamunde score which is even more unfitting for a finale. So I did some adjustments to give this movement more flow and dynamics (see the yellow markings in the score):

I am very excited about the result ...

Gerd