Schubert began his Symphony No. 9 in the summer of 1825 and continued to work on it over the next two years. In 1828 Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society of Friends of Music) agreed to give the premiere, but the orchestra struggled with the length and technical complexity of the new piece and ultimately refused to perform it.
In its place Schubert offered a shorter work in the same key, his Symphony No. 6 (Little C Major), which had not yet been heard publicly. He died nearly a month before that work’s premiere on December 14, 1828. He was 31 years old…
The unperformed Symphony No. 9 might have vanished if not for the intervention of Robert Schumann. At the time better known as a music journalist than as a composer, Schumann traveled in 1838 to Vienna, where he met with Schubert’s brother Ferdinand, who showed him the scores of several unperformed works. Schumann persuaded Ferdinand that the music, in particular Symphony No. 9, would be better-off in Leipzig, where his friend Felix Mendelssohn was championing new compositions. Mendelssohn agreed to take on the symphony, and it was performed in 1839.
Here is the Schubert Symphony #9 as performed by the late Claudio Abbado with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe:
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