MUSIC HE NEVER HEARD

Radio Record, 3 June 1938, Page 19

MUSIC HE NEVER HEARD

WORKS OF SCHUBERT PERFORMED AFTER HIS DEATH

"HERE is a good deal of Schubert’s music which he himself never heard performed, and we have it on the authority of Sir George Grove, who wrote: the programme notes for the Saturday concerts at the Crystal Palace, that when Schubert’s Fifth Symphony was played there in 1878-more than half a century after its composition-it was its first public performance. Composed, along with four earlier symphonies, before’ Schubert had passed out of his ’teens, it is full of all the youthful exuberance of spirits that we look for in his early work. At an age when Beethoven had given the world one Symphony, Schubert himself had composed eight, the first appearing in 1814, in its composer’s eighteenth year. It is supposed that the early symphonies were composed specially for the little group of family friends who made musie for their own pleasure, Schubert himself taking the viola part. The small orchestra for which they are laid out certainly lends colour to the suggestion that they were composed for such intimate performances. The Fifth Symphony of Schubert is in B flat. It is one of the happiest of all its composer's works, and there is no trace in it of the sadness which we can hear in many of his later works: it is bubbling over with happiness throughout. It is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns and strings-no clarinets nor trumpets. Schubert probably made use only of the instruments which were available

among his friends, although these included by that time a nuthber of professional musicians who had joined the party. The work contains four movements in the traditional form, a bustling first movement with the con-

ventional two principal themes, a finely melodious slow movement, a merry Minuet, and an energetic joyous, quick movement at the end. Schubert’s Symphony, No. 5, in IB Flat, will be played at 1YA on Friday, June 10, by the Berlin State Opera Orchestra.