Lecture: Dr. Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs (Bremen) Friday, 24th September, 17:00 h, Ferenc Gál Theological College, Klebelsberg Hall
Franz Schubert's B-minor Symphony (D 759), in its surviving form as a three-movement (!) fragment, has posed questions to posterity that have remained unanswered to the present day. These questions have given rise to a multitude of tenacious legends and rumors that have been elevated into a 'theory', and sometimes heatedly debated, by musicologists, critics, and aestheticians. Posterity has turned the hard necessity of the fragment into a virtue: the claim is still heard that Schubert considered his symphony ›finished‹ at the end of the E-major Andante, thereby creating in effect a new species of a two-movement symphony. Any completion, so the theory goes, is unthinkable in view of the »degree of perfection« attained by the extant movements. Yet all of these are mere speculation, pointless in view of the paucity of facts and ill-suited to shed light on the matter.
In his lecture, Dr. Benjamin Gunnar Cohrs offers some facts behind this legend and introduces into a completed performance version which he has edited in 2004 from Schubert's original sources. (The score is available on sale from http://www.musikmph.de/ Repertoire Explorer Study Score 888.) This version will receive its Hungarian first performance on Friday, 24 September 2010, at the St. Gellert Festival in the Cathedral of Szeged.
