In Search of the Real Schubert Ninth

Everybody knows Schubert’s Ninth, the “Great” C-major Symphony, right? Hardly.

What we’ve been listening to and admiring for a century-and-a-half is, if not an impostor, then at best an unreasonable facsimile. We are not talking the sorts of obscure interpretive points that fill musicologists’ waking (and perhaps sleeping) hours, but notes, rhythms and dynamics: the core musical components.

The autograph score of Schubert’s 1826 symphony, of “heavenly length,” in Schumann’s oft-quoted phrase, rested virtually undisturbed in the library of Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde until conductor Charles Mackerras and some like-minded explorers began poking into it in recent years.

Their curiosity has resulted in some ear-opening recordings, first Mackerras’ own in 1987 with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (Virgin Classics 90708) and now, simultaneously, two additional, stimulating period-performance versions, from the Hanover Band under Roy Goodman (Nimbus 5222) and the London Classical Players conducted by Roger Norrington (EMI/Angel 49949).

Mackerras showed that the published editions of the Schubert Ninth were so encumbered with baggage acquired over the years, through printers’ errors and conductors’ “improvements,” that much of the flavor, indeed, much of the text, had been lost.

It has proven to be a leaner, far more dynamic and less contemplative score than we had thought.

The now-three “authentic” recorded versions, while differing in many respects--proving again that virtually any score is open to interpretation--agree, on Schubert’s authority, that the opening movement should be played faster and in a different rhythm (two beats to a bar instead of the traditional four) than is customary, changing its shape and mood radically.

If in Goodman’s the first movement is fastish and powerfully inflected, Norrington’s is even more so. Each conductor has his own way of reading Schubert’s confusing markings, the result being that Goodman’s sounds bigger (a consequence as well of more resonant recording), more heavily accented and dynamically varied.

Norrington at times seems self-consciously intent on breaking with tradition, to the point of doing nothing with the spectacular first-movement coda: To him, it is just an undifferentiated detail within the big picture. Goodman allows a grand crescendo and a bit of ritard to end the movement with some of the triumphant glory to which old-time conductors had accustomed us.

The choice becomes more difficult thereafter, with both conductors scoring major points, bringing out subtleties of text and scoring hitherto--even in Mackerras’ recording--hidden from us. Perhaps the most telling is the manner in which the present recordings, the Hanover Band’s in particular, spotlight the trio of trombones that lends this work its unique coloration.

It should be pointed out that Goodman, Norrington and Mackerras utilize many of the same musicians, period-performance being the incestuous, largely British-staffed little world that it is. For instance, Goodman was the concertmaster for Mackerras’ recording and all three period versions employ the same principal clarinetist, Colin Lawson.

While this may sound like a classic instance of the reviewer exiting before the job is done, take it rather to mean that both the questions asked and the answers given by these performances would require volumes to discuss.

What the listener is unlikely to question, however, is that the London Classical Players is the more precise ensemble while the Hanover Band wind soloists are more characterful under Goodman’s relatively relaxed but by no means lax baton.

Amid this feast of refreshment one doesn’t quite know what to do with a new but old-hat recording of the Schubert Ninth, from the Saint Louis Symphony under Leonard Slatkin (RCA 60174).

Although Slatkin’s tempos are the slowest of all those mentioned here, his playing time is the shortest, since he skips many of the indicated repeats. The orchestra plays handsomely and the conductor obviously knows his business. He does not, however, give any indication of knowing Schubert’s original.

Incidental information: Southland listeners unwittingly had a live taste of the real Schubert Ninth late last year when Christof Perick led a bracing series of performances with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

Perick’s interpretation, while executed on modern instruments, was based on the autograph, seemingly not known by LACO management. Under any circumstances, the word never got out, with the result that audiences (including the critics), while aware that they were hearing an uncharacteristically taut and fast performance, did not realize that they were hearing--for the first time locally--a fair representation of the music as Schubert wrote it.