Katowice Culture Nature Festival / The Romantic Arcadia / NOSPR Chamber Players / Schubert - NOSPR

This year, the programme of the festival’s chamber concert consists in only one piece: Franz Schubert’s Octet in F major for clarinet, bassoon, horn, string quartet and double bass. What may be lacking in quantity, however, is more than made up for in quality. The work can undoubtedly be described as crowning the tradition of Viennese da camera music in its “lighter” form. This current is marked by numerous divertimenti, serenades, nocturnes and cassations by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven (not to mention the lesser composers). Inspiration for the Octet came from count Ferdinand von Troyer, chief steward at the court of archduke Rudolf Habsburg and a remarkable… clarinetist! The aristocrat would frequently perform the clarinet part in Beethoven’s Septetin E-flat major, popular in Vienna at the time, but he dreamt about a new piece to “complement” it. Indeed, Schubert adopted Beethoven’s Septet as a blueprint: he copied its formal framework (only switching the positions of the menuet and the scherzo), added the part of the second violin –  and filled the framework with his own, deeply “Schubertian” music. This consists of wonderful melodies, astonishing harmonies, danceable rhythms  – and an atmosphere, certainly closer to the then-suburban Grinzing than the imperial city of Vienna. The composer completed his Octet on 1st March 1824 (as noted in the score), and the first performance took place in the same month already, at Troyer’s Viennese palace – with the master of the house in the main role, while the first violin was played by Ignaz Schuppanzigh, Beethoven’s “full-time” chamber player. In the early 1824, clearly “on a roll”, in a letter to his friend, the painter Leopold Kupelwieser, writing about the completion of his two quartets (Rosamunde and Death and the maiden, both works of true genius) and the Octet, Schubert added: “In that manner, I wanted to pave my way towards a great symphony.” Indeed, he soon began work on the Symphony in C major, which would become his response to Beethoven’s Ninth. Although he never heard it, it was the one that posterity dubbed Great.

Stanisław Kosz

Concert duration: approximately 60 minutes