After visiting Schubert some time during February 1824, the painter Moritz von Schwind wrote to their mutual friend Franz von Schober: ‘Schubert has now long been at work on an octet, with the greatest enthusiasm. If you go and see him during the day he says “Hello. How are you?, he carries on working, whereupon you leave.’
Schubert completed the score on 1 March, and the first performance took place at the home of a Viennese nobleman, Anton Freiherr von Spielmann, later that month.
The first public performance was not until April 1827, in the hall of the Vienna Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Some contemporary reports found it too long, though the Wiener Allgemeine Theaterzeitung called it ‘friendly, agreeable and interesting’, and ‘worthy of the composer’s well-known talents’—a revealing counter to the old myth that Schubert worked in virtual obscurity, appreciated only by a circle of close friends.
Here is Janine Jansen and her friends to play this masterpiece for you:
