The Budapest Festival Orchestra, founded in 1983, is now recognized as one of the greatest ensembles in Hungary—and in the world, according to Gramophone magazine. Under the expert baton of Iván Fischer, the BFO presents a stellar program dedicated to two never-finished masterworks by two beloved Austrian composers.
Schubert's Symphony No. 8, composed in 1822, is famously called the "Unfinished," but the composer's intentions for the work remain largely unknown. What we do know is that the two completed movements contain some of the most beautiful music Schubert ever wrote, groundbreaking and lyrical, often called the first Romantic symphony.
If Schubert's 8th leaves Classicism and helps inaugurate the Romantic period, Bruckner's Ninth is a stepping stone from Romanticism into modernity, incorporating symbolic and metaphysical elements, experiments with atonality, and innovative harmonic developments. And like Schubert's masterpiece, it was left unfinished at the time of Bruckner's death, with only fragments of the fourth movement surviving.
