There is something indescribable for me about this music: It is joyful, yet also sad. Happy, yet also tragic. And the second movement is like the sounds of angels.
These sounds need to be made by sensitive, caring musicians. It must be played like chamber music would sound in heaven…
Schubert’s Fifth symphony was written when the composer was 19 and is the last of his ‘early’ symphonies (although given that he died at the age of 31 all his works are in a sense early!).
It was composed for only a small orchestra and it is full of lightness and grace but nevertheless has some hidden complexity particularly in the first two movements.
In many ways this early-Romantic music is Mozartean but it also shows some darker Beethovenian qualities on occasion.
Here is a group who knows how to do it:
