Franz Schubert

   Austrian composer

   born: 31 January 1797, near Vienna; died: 19 November 1828, Vienna

              Overture in the Italian Style in C major, D. 591

Once upon a time, during a life far too short, lived a poor citizen of Vienna who possessed a wealth beyond kings.  His name was Franz Schubert, and his fortune was melody.  His glorious pen began to flow when he was just thirteen years old.  By his eighteenth year he had already completed several masterworks, including Gretchen am Spinnrade (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel) to the words of Goethe.  During the very next year poured a profusion of more than 140 songs, and that was only a beginning.  By Schubert’s death at the age of thirty-one, his catalog had grown to almost a thousand entries:  an abundance of chamber music, operas, liturgical offerings and nine symphonies.  And in each category are some of the finest jewels in all of music.  Among these is a small treasury of entertaining overtures derived from associated stage works or composed as divertissements for various concert requirements.  The overtures are written with an affectionate wink at Mozart and various salutes to Haydn, all in good fun, with poise and grace at every turn.

In November of 1817 Schubert scored a pair of overtures which he labeled Italian, in part as a tip-of-the-hat to Rossini.  (In fact, he had recently attended a performance in Vienna of L’Italiana in Algeri.)  Both of Schubert’s new overtures begin in the Haydn manner of a slow prelude (Adagio) followed by a sprightly second section, marked Allegro in C for this particular work.  Although Schubert never lived to hear the work performed by an orchestra, he liked the music enough to perform a piano version of the piece at a salon concert in Vienna on March 12, 1818 as one of four players at two pianos (eight hands).

The music begins with a dialog of melancholy between the oboe and clarinet on a canvas of classical hues.  The lyrical exchanges are resolved by the snappy Italianate tunes and rhythms of the Allegro, which recalls a Rossini-signature crescendo for dramatic effect.  Tremolos in the strings mark the coda, tying the ribbons with punctual accents at the close.

program notes by Edward Yadzinsky