The cycle of the Schubert symphonies concludes with the Symphony No. 9 in C major.
Arguably the musical center of the continent in the early 19th century, Vienna was home to both Schubert and Beethoven, and this symphony represented the avant garde of that time and place -- except that no one ever knew it. The autograph sat in a pile of manuscripts at a local musical club for a dozen years. Finally, Robert Schumann was shown the score. He took it to Leipzig and showed it to Felix Mendelssohn, who looked at it goggle-eyed and gave the premiere performance a few months later.
For Schubert, it was just another one of those symphonies that he never got to hear performed. He never gave up though; he had started work on a symphony No. 10 at the time of his death at age 31.
Working about a century before Schubert, in Venice, Antonio Vivaldi mostly busied himself with music for his student orchestra. Occasionally he got an opportunity to publish, and his l'Estro Armonico gave him a chance to get his name out beyond the canals of the Most Serene Republic. This week we'll hear No. 3 in the series of the twelve concerti grossi that make up the collection.
Alfred Brendel plays the sonata that Beethoven wrote under the patronage of Count von Waldstein, bringing an immortality to the latter's name that was a bargain at any price.
And Leonard Bernstein conducts Pulcinella, the ballet written by Igor Stravinsky when Diaghalev's Ballets Russes was once again the groundbreaking Paris company after World War I.
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