The feat was almost forgotten: Nikolaus Harnoncourt's first examination of Schubert's symphonies is now available as a CD box.
Even later he did not reach the same intensity.
In 1988 Nikolaus Harnoncourt performed the eight Schubert symphonies with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe at the Graz Styriarte.
For the first time he dedicated himself to these works as a conductor, and they were new to many of the musicians involved - an ideal case.
The recording towers above Harnoncourt's own recordings with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic.
Heavenly cheers and at the same time saddened frustration.
Back then, in 1988 and at the start of their careers, the young musicians had already reached their zenith with Schubert.
Something like that always happened when Nikolaus Harnoncourt was at the podium of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
It just didn't get any better.
A violist who switched to the BR Symphony Orchestra said many years later: Regardless of which celebrity is in charge of the podium - with Schubert or Beethoven she is hopeless and forever spoiled by Harnoncourt's solutions.
In 1991 an epoch-making Beethoven cycle was created at the Graz Styriarte.
What was forgotten until recently: three years earlier, Harnoncourt had planned Schubert's symphonies at his festival with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
It was even a debut for the ancestor of performance practice: he dedicated himself to this composer as a conductor for the first time.
And for many ensemble members, too, some symphonies represented uncharted territory.
An ideal case.
Unencumbered by misunderstood traditions and well-worn routines, but inspired by excessive curiosity, the eight works were conquered.
Harnoncourt was never to surpass this Schubert cycle, which slumbered in the ORF archive, in later recordings with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic.
It was like landing on the moon.
The Chamber Orchestra of Europe forgot to implement Harnoncourt's ideas
What catches the ear: the almost forgotten willingness of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe to implement Harnoncourt's ideas.
With all due respect to the Concentus Musicus, the actual ensemble of the star: Technically, the musicians from all over Europe played in an extra league.
Whenever the engine had to start in other orchestras with Harnoncourt's emphasis, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe was immediately “there”.
Immediate, offensive, pure, with a flexibility close to perfection.
This is one of the reasons why Harnoncourt chose tempos in 1988, which he later no longer risked with Schubert.
The finale of the fourth, the "tragic", is pure storm-inducing licking.
All the more so in that section of this movement that no one else like Harnoncourt was able to realize, in the almost wordless brass dialogue over the accompanying simmering strings.
This typical cross-fading of various gestures, moods and levels, the interlocking of melos with accompanying figures, which Schubert catastrophically accentuated in the last movement of his great C major symphony, is Harnoncourt's specialty.
With the Chamber Orchestra of Europe everything sounds clearer, sharper, more pointed.
Especially in the early symphonies, which are not Harnoncourt's.
The way they were performed in Graz in 1988, as sometimes dangerous, teeth-baring sound organisms, it becomes clear that symphonies one to six are hardly suitable as nice recordings.
“He explained the connection between Schubert and folk music as well as literature,” recalls double bass player Dane Roberts.
At Harnoncourt, who always saw himself as a refined dance floor musician, you had come to the right place.
This can be heard especially in the trio parts of many movements.
No one else was able to bring Schubert's melancholy lust for folk song to life: thanks to the hot rehearsal summer of 1988, the members of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe had become loud Austrians.
The “unfinished” as a work in front of the black hole
Harnoncourt did not understand the most famous symphony, the “Unfinished”, as it was in its title.
For him this B minor opus was completed as a preliminary stage to romantic tone poems.
That's another reason why he never misused it as a warm-up for a bigger colossus after the concert break.
You can already find out why with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
There are no gaps here that are sentimentally puttied up or even ignored by other conductors, but abysses without a bottom.
An existential half an hour, an end-time and final piece like Bruckner's Ninth or Mahler's Ninth Symphony, a work before the black hole.
Harnoncourt may later have allowed himself more time with Schubert for the details, or he may have given more space to the melancholy and the wisdom of life: the resilience and emphasis of this early discussion were no longer surpassed.
Or as the British cellist Sally Pendlebury put it about these symphonies: "It would be an understatement to say that they completely changed my life."
Franz Schubert:
The Symphonies.
Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Nikolaus Harnoncourt (ICA).