Awarded by Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik/German Record Critics’ Award (Longlist 01/2022), Toccata (CD of the month), DIE ZEIT (Music choice of the year 2021), Die Presse (Best of 2021 – Classical: bronze), Radio télévision belge (Le Choix musical de Musiq’3), Radio Klassik (CD of the day)
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Complete Symphonies & Symphonical fragments
CD I:
Symphony No. 1 in D major D 82; Overture in D major D 2A*
Symphony in D major D 2B*; Overture in D major D 2G*
Fragments of two Orchestral pieces D 74A* & 71C*
Symphony No. 2 in B flat major D 125; Fragment of an Orchestral piece D 94A*
CD II:
Symphony No. 3 in D major D 200
Symphony No. 5 in B flat major D 485
Symphony No. 7 in B minor D 759 „Unfinished“
from: Symphony No. 7 in B minor D 759 „Unfinished“: [Scherzo.] Allegro
CD III:
Symphony No. 4 in C minor D 417 „Tragic“
Symphony No. 6 in C major D 589 „Little C major“
Symphony in E major D 729
CD IV:
Symphony No. 8 in C major D 944 „Great C major“
L’Orfeo Barockorchester
Michi Gaigg, conductor
* first recordings
(cpo 2021)
I bet you’ve never heard the great and famous Schubert symphonies like this before – technically on a par with many other recordings, but with a completely different sound […]
ORF Ö1, Hans Georg Nicklaus, 14 December 2021CD of the month
A brilliant benchmark recording with punch!
Toccata – Alte Musik aktuell, Wolfgang Reihing, Jan/Feb 2022Michi Gaigg has a soft spot for Lieder, for their poetry and the strong link to syntax. The typically Viennese, the folk dances, Schubert’s Austrian soul, all of this is very close to the bone. Even the Unfinished Symphony and the Great C major sound like Lied, folk dance, Vienna. Every now and again some catastrophe turns the world upside down. With Gaigg it flares up seemingly effortlessly and spontaneously […]
Süddeutsche Zeitung, Reinhard Brembeck, 23 December 2021There is more than the „Unfinished“, and a gifted child should be taken seriously […]
Regarding this „Unfinished“: with Gaigg and L’Orfeo the beginning is not a mystifying murmur from a gloomy vagueness, but a creaturely groan which later grows into eerie brusqueness and then, in the Adagio, diminishes to disembodied sallowness. It really is the opposite of Biedermeier, painted in the colours of „period instruments“, old and modern simultaneously.[…]Gaigg’s approach is unpretentious and intuitive. She avoids rhetorical artifice and a moral pointing finger à la Harnoncourt. In the youth symphonies nr 1 to 6 we occasionally find a hearty, boisterous lad whooping it up. The colours of the period woodwinds gleam, the tempi are excitingly virtuosic, but never exaggerated. And yet, everywhere there is potential gloom – even in the mischievous and exuberant second symphony, a definite highlight in this collection.[…] Apparently Schubert once mentioned that he is not familiar with jolly music. One can hear it.
Die Presse, Walter Weidringer, 13 December 2021[…] It generally underlines the consistency with which Michi Gaigg and her fabulous musicians confirm Schubert as an innovative symphonic composer, declaring the notion of Schubert as Beethoven’s epigone null and void. The frequently invoked balance between strings and winds is manifest here. The conductor makes use of the abundant orchestral colours to highlight structural elements in the music. Not quite your comfortable and familiar Schubert.
Concerti.de, Frank Armbruster, 17 November 2021A jolt passes through this music
Sounds of romantic awakenings, joyful rumours of utopian glory, a jolt passes through this music: and that applies to Michi Gaigg and L’Orfeo’s rendering of Schubert’s Great C major Symphony more than to other splendid recordings. […]
Stereoplay, Martin Mezger, January 2022
[…] The recording boasts vigour and crispness, yet the woodwinds excel with delicate phrasing.
Wiener Zeitung, Christoph Irrgeher, 7 December 2021[…] Schubert’s Symphony Nr 3 in D major, D200, has seldom been this captivating, with so much esprit and so explicit than here with the L’Orfeo Barockorchester. They leave contestants on period instruments as well as full-grown philharmonics well behind. […]
DrehPunktKultur, Horst Reischenböck, 20 December 2021[…] This new recording is characterized with freshness and conciseness, emotion and transparency. There is a fine sense of nuances hardly ever heard before. A delicate reading between the lines, so to speak […]
Klassik.com, Jürgen Schaarwächter, 26 November 2021
