Whether or not Schubert regarded today’s version of his B-minor Symphony as complete is no longer a matter for speculation. We know that he planned to complete it, since piano sketches — a few measures orchestrated — have been found for a third movement, and there is evidence that the B-minor music to Rosamunde is based on what would have been the final movement.
The composer had gone as far as he could go with the score in 1822 and went on to other musical business — above all the creation of the “Wanderer” Fantasy and the completion of the Mass in A-flat, begun two years earlier.
Schubert presented the two completed movements of the Symphony to his friend Joseph Hüttenbrenner, to be passed on to his brother Anselm, in appreciation of the part played by the latter in obtaining for the composer an honorary membership in the Music Society of Graz.
It was Joseph Hüttenbrenner who made the conductor Johann Herbeck aware of the Symphony’s resting place, when in 1860 he wrote to the conductor that he should look at the Schubert manuscripts in Anselm’s possession.
And that’s how we are able to hear this masterpiece today.
){kind=link}