What did one expect, though, now that it's here. It was always out of the question that the third and fourth movements could immediately impress enough to sound right after such well-known and much-loved movements as the first two. But that is set against a recent playing of no.9 which is great in scale if a bit more sub-Beethoven and rhythmically adventurous than as outstandingly 'Great' as it is called. And it is with similar feelings that this re-made no.8 leaves us at the end. Quite possibly credibly Schubert, one just knows it's not from an autograph score and so it is essential to know about, will be played in preference to leaving the symphony unfinished but it's like only having Lulu doing a fine job on The Man Who Sold the World if the Bowie version had ever been lost.
The opening shimmering violins are surely too quick. But I often think tempi are taken too fast rather than too slow. Festina lente, it's not a race. Harnoncourt's first two movements are timed at 26.21 on his complete Symphonies recording which compares with 22.24 by Venzago so I might have a point, for once. I might not have thought this new release would win by quite such a margin had I not been prompted to look it up by those opening bars. The first movement is marked Allegro moderato, so we are left to wonder how fast moderately fast is meant to be. If disco records can have beats per minute ratings then metronome values indicated by the composer shouldn't result in four minutes difference between two recordings of the same 20-odd minutes of music and I'm with Harnoncourt, I'm sure he'd have been delighted to know.
Another of my usual objections is contrast. Light and shade, dark and light, loud and soft (betting with Haydn's Surprise Symphony), were surely Romantic inventions, or preferences, that have been taken to further extremes by contemporary composers who still think we are going to be shocked and surprised by surprisde and shock. No, we've come to expect it, it's as predictable as the next eight bars of Philip Glass. It's fine in Beethoven, maybe it was him that made it seem so necessary, but we've been paying for it ever since.
But Venzago possibly flows better in his reconstruction of Schubert than he does in his interpretation of the extant first two. Except that it is in this unfamiliar territory that we are in less of a position to say.
At less than 44 minutes, with only this symphony on it, one might expect more for the pound in your pocket but what would one fill up the other half hour with. On this occasion, the symphony stands alone and I, personally, felt the need to know. And it stands up as well as it could have been expected to. The added movements were never going to exceed what we had already but they make enough sense for a respectable pass mark and, who is to say, play it enough and one day they will probably sound right.
Best of luck to it and thanks for doing it.
