Schubert: Symphony No. 1 in D major, D. 82

How should a conductor approach a 16-year-old composer's first {symphony}? Even if the composer is {$Franz Schubert},how should he treat it? As a precocious first effort? As a step toward later,greater {symphonies}? Or,as {$Kant} would say,as the thing in itself? {$Karl Böhm} tries the {$Kantian} approach in his 1971 recording of the {$Schubert} {&First} with the {$Berlin Philharmonic}. With exposition repeats intact and the weighty playing of the {$Berlin} behind him,{$Böhm} takes the {&First} not as a first effort or as a step on the ladder to greatness,but as greatness itself. This approach wouldn't work for other composers,even other great composers. Even the 16-year-old {$Mozart}'s {&Symphony in G major} (K. 110) is a work of not-quite-formed genius. But {$Schubert}'s D major (D. 82) is a fully formed work of genius that {$Böhm} and the {$Berlin} play with the respect and awe it deserves. Their {Adagio} introduction is splendid on first hearing and resplendent when it returns at the {
ecapitulation}. Their main {Allegro vivace} is gracefully powerful,their {Andante} flows like a river in spring,their {Allegretto minuetto} majestically dances with a graceful trio in its center,and their closing {Allegro vivace} rushes like the wind down from the Alps to Vienna born by pastoral flutes and dulcet oboes toward the high town walls of trumpets and drums. If their performance has the faint scent of {$Mozartian} elegance in the opening {Allegro vivace} and the odor of {$Beethovenian} strength in the closing {Allegro vivace},well,{$Schubert} was merely 16 and he esteemed his elders. But he was a supremely gifted 16 and in {$Böhm}'s interpretation,his {&Symphony No. 1} can stand as greatness in itself.,All Music Guide