Franz Schubert himself never heard his “Great Symphony”, which was long considered impossible to play. It was not until more than 10 years after his death that it received its first performance, under Felix Mendelssohn in the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. The instigator of this première was Robert Schumann, who discovered the composition among some unpublished manuscripts during a visit to Schubert's brother Ferdinand and was able to fire the Leipzig kapellmeister Mendelssohn's enthusiasm for a performance.
“This symphony produced an impression on us such as none had done since those of Beethoven. Here, besides masterly compositional technique, there is life in every fibre, colours down to the finest nuance, meaning everywhere, the acutest expression of detail, and the whole cast over by a romanticism that we are already familiar with elsewhere among Schubert's works.”
In this symphony, Enoch zu Guttenberg makes uncompromising statements about human existence, about the violent nature of our reality that is, all the same, pervaded by the most intimate beauty. A modern and gripping new interpretation, being also the last recording of the conductor.