How I Discovered...SCHUBERT

[@debbie94510]

Delightful story, Dave! I was actually a music major in college before I really learned anything about Schubert. In my music history class I was taught that he was the lied meister, and his best known work was the lied, Erlkonig. Then one day my clarinet professor told me that a woman was doing a PhD recital at UCLA and needed a clarinetist for Der Hirt auf Dem Felsen. He offered me the job (my very first paid gig!) and I fell in love with that beautiful piece. It was my very favorite piece of music for many years, until last year I found the Schubert String Quintet in C Major in my KZbin feed. I listened to it a couple times and realized this was my new favorite piece of all time. I thought it was amazing that only Schubert was able to top Schubert in my life, and that I had better learn more about him. My "real job" for many years has been as a paralegal, and though I have continued to love classical music, I hadn't really kept up with it. Learning about Schubert and his works has been a very great delight and has reawakened my love for classical music. It's how I found you, Dave! Now I want to play my clarinet more and am looking for any opportunities to play chamber music.

[@jeffheller642]

How I discovered non-opera classical music ... I happened upon Dave's videos at just the right time (last August) and began watching --- and LISTENING. And I decided to ground myself in 18th and 19th century first.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

I'm honored!

[@SorsFerran]

First, I must thank you for single-handedly rejuvenating my love for listening to music, especially the late Romantic symphonists. As a professional musician I enjoy your wit, commentary, honesty, and infectious love for music. You are a national treasure - or should be - and a truly great music critic in the fullest sense of that term. I came to Schubert by listening to my father, a guitarist, accompany a clarinetist in an arrangement of the Arpeggione during late night practice sessions. That was my bedtime music for several months at 12 years old. I have performed, listened and learned from his music over the years. I'm delving into his operas and singspiel at the moment and the results have been surprisingly rewarding.

[@theoryjoe1451]

As a kid I remember the unfinished symphony was used in a Simpsons episode, back when the show was still good. You could say I rediscovered Schubert when a friend of mine and I were partaking the Devil's Lettuce, and he put on the Fantasy for Piano Four Hands played by Perahia and Lupu. The beautiful melodies and modulations were particularly moving, and to this day, that is a desert island piece of music for me.

[@dionbaillargeon4899]

This one has hit home hard. My father was mostly indifferent to music, but my mother hated classical music with a passion, and even more so since I started liking it. Both my parents would mock me for listening to "dead people's music". My mother even prohibited me from using her CD player and threatened me continuously with throwing away the small collection of cheap records I had slowly bought from discount stores as a teenager, so I only could listen to music in secret, when she was away and I was left alone at home for a few hours. I was always terrified she would come back early and catch me using the stereo. I've never fogotten how she once saw me visibly enjoying some music (with my headphones on! I think it was some Boccherini cello concerto) and she became so irritated by my enjoying it that made me turn it off immediately. Reflecting back, I now understand that she couldn't stand the sight of anyone enjoying anything and I've always thanked music for helping me understand what a terrible person she was. So, in short, my process of discovering classical music was incredibly painful because of my mother (quite a different experience from yours), but what came out of that pain was so enlightening and powerful at the same time. As for Schubert, I think my first record was a double CD released by an obscure label called "Prestige Classics" with the Slovak Philarmonic and Slovak Chamber orchestras conducted by Zdenek Kosler and Bohdan Warchal. It included symphonies nº 5, 8 and 9, along with some lovely arrangements. I loved particularly a string arrangement of the serenade D957. I guess I would find it overly corny now, but melodies are always what gets you hooked at first.

[@vilebrequin6923]

Wow, that's awful. Sorry you went through that. So pleased that your innate love for great music conquered all that maternal/parental negatude!

[@davidaiken1061]

I am humbled by your remarks, Dave, and by this series. Maybe there is a divine providence after all. In any case, my appreciation of Schubert was delayed largely until middle age. My parents, as you know, were classical music lovers and had a particular affinity for Viennese Classicism. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were always emanating from the "hi-fi" set, but Schubert not so much. My first exposure to him was, of course, via the Unfinished Symphony. My grandmother had a 10" LP of that work by Who Knows What Orchestra and Conductor. All I remember was the cover: a rendering of page from an orchestral score with a huge ink blot and blank staves thereafter. While still a child, and weirdly enough, I became familiar with the "Grand Duo: in the Joachim orchestration--an ancient Vanguard LP billed as Schubert's "Gastein Symphony." I fell in love with the piece and played that record over and over. But more Schubert had to wait until my days as an undergrad music major. As I studied music history I began to learn about the glories of Schubert lieder and came to know the Trout Quintet and Quartet 14. But I really didn't catch on to Schubert's full stature as a composer until grad school was behind me and I had taken up a faculty position at a liberal arts college. Oddly, I think it was being a philosophy professor that turned me on to Schubert's muse. His music is so deep. Dark currents run beneath the lyrical surfaces of his music. Those currents, perhaps more than any other composer, save Mahler and perhaps Shostakovich, bespeak the human condition at its most dire, and also at its most exalted. Sometimes I think the great Quintet in C teaches me more about my humanity, and our collective predicament, than most philosophers--except for perhaps the existentialists. My appreciation for Schubert's amazing achievement during a very short and tragic life has never been higher. If the evil god Cancrizans forced me to choose between never hearning another note of Beethoven or of Schubert, now I would choose Schubert over Beethoven. Thankfully, I don't have to choose!

[@niko_____3820]

I`m usually happy to dismiss the lyrics over great music any day, but I admit following the lyrics of Schubert Lieder is not in vain, or trivial. Unlike the aria "Amore, amore, amore" in any opera, although sung Italian does sound beautiful.

[@raptorphile56]

My first exposure to Schubert was when I was 14. I took my girlfriend to a movie called The House That Dripped Blood, an anthology about dreadful things that happened to people who lived in this particular house. But one of the occupants, Peter Cushing's character, a bachelor obsessing over a former love, put The Death and The Maiden on his record player and bits of it were also heard throughout this part of the movie and I remember thinking "I really like this music!". It was many more years before I learned what it was and of course I was ecstatic when I found out. I can't listen to it now without recalling that movie.

[@geraldparker8125]

I would have known Schubert's music before that (expecially his "Ave Maria") but it was two works that really bowled me over, making Schubert one of my top five or so composers (along with Bach, Cherubini, Haydn, and Bartok). I had a ten-inch LP disc of Walter's recording of the Unfiniahed Symphony and when my school orchestra played it I (in the double bass section) simply melted to that music, playing it. When I first heard "Nacht und Träume" as a teenage sailor at a recital at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., I knew who the greatest Lieder composer of them all had to be.

[@leestamm3187]

When I was in my early teens, an elderly lady for whom I mowed the lawn and raked leaves had a baby grand piano in her living room that she played quite well. I enjoyed listening and Schubert was among her favorites. I recognized some of the tunes from outside sources like you noted, but found real meaning in them as this nice lady played. Been a fan ever since, the piano pieces in particular.

[@barryguerrero6480]

I had such a dark and 'covered' sound as a tuba player in my youth - as well as in-tune, rhythmically accurate, in tempo, etc. - that I was asked to cover the string bass part in Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony in the All District (school district) Orchestra on tuba. Sooooo, my introduction was that wonderful B-minor opening motto in the bass. Who could forget that!

[@nelsoncamargo5120]

I discovered Schubert when I heard an arrangement of the Lied Ständchen, known as "Serenata" here in Brazil. It's such a lovely melody!

[@francoisjoubert6867]

I was in high school when I went to a house concert at some well-to-do neighbours. It was a Liederabend - and the soprano introduced the music to the audience, as the audience perhaps (ahem) wasn't that familiar with the whole Lieder thing. She sang some Schubert, which included "An die Musik". It was the first time I ever heard anything like that. The first Schubert CD I got was the EMI lieder recital by Lucia Popp. I imprinted on that and it has remained one of my most treasured recordings of all time.

[@smallbirdsongs]

When I was seven years old I would sit with my younger sister on the green shag carpet in the early mornings and watch cartoons. I thought "The Smurfs" were too cutesypie but my sister loved them. I remember feeling grumpy and being annoyed by those tiny blue creatures, but when Gargamel emerged on the scene, we would hear the most mysterious and captivating music. I never knew it at the time, but it was Schubert's 8th! It was the first piece of classical music I ever loved, but I didn't really give Schubert a second thought until I watched "Crimes and Misdemeanors" ten years later. I was knocked out by the repeated use of the 15th String Quartet, and I've adored Schubert ever since, particularly his later works, which I'm pretty sure you've described as cosmic, mystical, otherworldly, etc., and of course I agree! Also: Dave, thank you for everything. Your videos have enriched and deepened my love of music, and I am truly grateful to you!

[@brtherjohn]

For me, the piano work, Fantasie in F minor, for 4 Hands! Sooooo special! It was on an old Command recording. Not long after that, the Schubert 9th - with Bruno Walter, on Columbia! Then the Brendel Vox recording of the Shubert Impromptus....

[@renatmelamed6140]

Around 2008 I was looking for a way to learn appreciating classical singing and somehow chanced upon a KZbin upload of Alexander Kipnis singing Schubert's "Der Doppelgaenger". I bought the Lebendige Vergangenheit CD it was on and am a fan of both Kipnis as a singer and Schubert as a song composer to this day. So far I couldn't get into his instrumental music though.

[@MrEye22tiger]

My first exposure to the unfinished symphony was in my childhood as it was one of the many classical tunes stuffed into the smurfs cartoon on saturday morning....lol...how my journey to love and discover classical music began lol

[@dickiebobradio1304]

My first encounter with Schubert was the first movement of the Unfinished Symphony on the Boston Pops' "Symphonies" record with Arthur Fiedler (an 'abridged' version). I remember being surprised and puzzled by Schubert's birth and death dates (such a short life!). And the way it sounded shaped my young impression of what classical symphonic music was supposed to sound like.

[@tom6693]

As a little kid growing up in the pre-video '50s, the record player was a chief source of our fun, and among our favorite records were several 45s of classical music cleverly chosen for children (and cleverly disguised in packaging that made it all look like cartoons). We had those tunes in our heads from playing those records to death, and only much later did I realize that among the music we marched around to, did dances to, made-up stories for was Schubert's Rosamunde Ballet music--such a wonderfully jaunty tune. Also in that series were pieces I only later came to know as Bizet's Farandol from L'Arlesienne, the Trepak from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, and the opening Furiante from Dvorak's Slavonic Dances (the rhythm in that used to make my brother go nuts on his drums!). In any case, I knew those pieces backwards and forwards and loved them all. I still do.

[@craigbias4494]

I'd have been about 7 when I beginning piano lessons and spent the first few years working through Howard Kasschau's Piano Course - Step-byStep to Mastery of the Piano and the last piece of Book One was 'Theme from the Unfinished Symphony' - tune in the left hand, accompanying chords in the right. The pictures of the composers fascinated me. He was the only one wearing glasses.

[@tobiolopainto]

When I was four years old, I'd join my mother, Kate, and her friend Ethel Tyne while they played piano four hands of various Masters. I'd be under the piano playing with my trucks and cars. The first Schubert I heard from under the piano were the various really great piano 4 hand stuff, the marches, and the fantastic Rondo in A, the F minor fantasie, etc. My mother and Ethel would play through the symphonies, too. These have enough great tunes for a dozen composers. But when Kate was alone, she'd get the Schubert Song Book out and sing through it while accompanying herself. When she played Erlkonig she'd cry at the climax--(to this day, I cry at the climax). She'd cry at Du bist die ruh, Nacht und Traume, Auf dem Wasser zu singen (that's a tear jerker)and others. They'd play through all the Haydn Symphonies, and to this day when some numbered symphony by Hadyn comes on, I know it from those days, long ago in the 50s, when Kate and Ethel played the piano that I was under.

[@rugerthedog396]

Slightly after the womb here, the Unfinished was via Mom and Dad and a mono Charles Munch/BSO record. Bravo for all the other examples, especially the cartoon reference. The guy just seemingly knocked out 3 or 4 great melodies each day before breakfast, how could you not be enveloped by Schubert?

[@dmntuba]

I am a retired classically trained orchestral Tuba player, and knew of Schubert as a young guy...no Tuba so didn't pay any attention to him. 1st year of college Schubert 9 was on my Music History listening so I went to the Library and put it on the turntable....WOW!!!!! I was sooooo blown away by the music, and ended up listening to it 4 times thru that night. Schubert has been one of my favorite "go to" composers for last 38 years 👍

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

When the Yale Phil did Schubert 9 under Otto Werner-Muller he added a tuba part.

[@dmntuba]

@@DavesClassicalGuide SWEET!!! 🤣

[@jimcarlile7238]

I remember finding an old set of Spike Jones' 78s of the Nutcracker which was probably my first exposure to music, and maybe the best. There was also a weird old Norman Rose children's album called 'The Sleepy Family' which had a thrown together flip side of Kabalevsky, the 1812 Overture, and one of the Slavonic Dances. I played that to death, as well as a Gilbert and Sullivan record from a huge late 50's "Golden Treasury' set or some such name. The rest of that set was like a kiddie 'Anthology of American Folk Music,' which was kind of genius for them to do. Then of course the Walt Disney 'Great Composers' album a few years later, which is still great. That Mozart funeral story there still gets to me.

[@russelljohn5258]

When I was a little kid early to mid 1950's we had a large console record player on our enclosed back porch. It played and also cut 78's. I watched my Dad play records then when he was at work, I would play records and listen, We had Die Schone Mullerin sung by Richard crooks, Mozarts Serenade in G, Schubert's Gflat impromptu played by Edwin Fisher. I played these over and over. When seomtime in the mid fifties we got a tabletop Webcore player Dad started to collect 33 1/3 LPs, the first I remember, are the Bflat Opuus Posth sonata played by Schnabel, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf singing a selection of Schubert lieder Im Fruling, Auf Dem Wasser Zu Singen, Der Erlkonig, the Serenade, etc. We also at some point got the Unfinished, don't remember who by but probably Munch with Boston. We also got Beethoven Sumphonies box set by Toscanini and one of my absolute favorites, Schubert's Octet. When I as sick and not feeling well my Dad would sit at my bedside and tell me stories about Schubert, and my "This makes me feel better music" was the Octet, cheerful, melodic and the mix of instruments enchanting. Many years later 1993 I had to go into the hospital for an operation, in recovery my wife was informed by the reocvery nurse I was asking for a chocolate milkshake and Schubert's Octet. Needless to say my love for Schubert, and with my father, has been lifelong.

[@fareedshah4417]

Schubert is an amazing composer: beautiful and moving. Had he and Mozart lived another 10 years, they would probably have surpassed everyone .

[@johnnelson3665]

I think Mozart already peaked out. Can’t say the same for Schubert.

[@fareedshah4417]

@@johnnelson3665 You might be right, but had mozart lived he would have listened to Beethoven and others This might have prompted him to write more masterworks.

[@glennportnoy1305]

I know this will age me. When my sister and I were very young my parents would buy us these very small golden records. The discs were actually yellow. One of them was called "Schubert's Music." I loved the little melody which I later learned was from Rosamunde. I believe it was a minuet or entr'acte. So grateful to be exposed to this wonderful music.

[@eliecanetti]

I think I might have encountered Schubert through a Get Smart episode. I mean my Dad listened to a lot of Schubert at home (he once told me that the only music he liked was written in the 19th century and composed within 100 miles of Vienna), so I knew the music, but except for Beethoven, I probably didn’t realize who the composer was. But in the Get Smart episode as I recall it, Max and 99 defeat a madman who was working on bringing the dead back to life. And at the end, Max is musing to the chief about all the geniuses of the past who could have been brought back to life, and at the end of the list he wishes Schubert could have been brought back, especially Schubert. So the chief asks “why especially Schubert”? And Max responds “So he could finish his symphony.” And that’s what led me to listen to the Unfinished Symphony (I’m afraid I don’t know which recording) and realize, “Oh, I know this music”. Hope I’m remembering this all correctly but it’s late and I am not going to fact check myself right now.

[@clementewerner]

Although I grew up in a house where classical music was played, and sang Bach, Britten and Vaughan Williams in the Church Choir, there was no Schubert, and as a young radical I dismissed his music as hopeless bourgeois froth, and wanted to walk out of a recital that included the Trout Quintet but was in the middle of the row. So I was surprised, even shocked to hear the Piano Trio op 100 in Kubrick's film Barry Lyndon, which I used to see at least once a month in London's repertory cinemas. From then I have never looked back, and adore the music and indeed, the man. I have two complete sets of the piano sonatas (Kempff and Uchida) and about 20 recordings Die Winterreise, and so on. I have little interest in the operas or the church music, and as Dave has indicated elsewhere only 5,8 and 9 of the Symphonies are really good, maybe No 1. So I started out a heretic, and am now a believer, and will be listening to Schubert until I die.

[@anthonycook6213]

I grew up in the 1960's hearing the Unfinished that was included in a Reader's Digest collection of great symphonic music. Next, I got to conduct part of the first movement with our high school orchestra. Although my early, snobby interest went with 20th cent. music, I noted use of Marche Millitare by Stravinsky and an arrangement of dances by Webern. I enjoyed a concert of Schubert Lieder, bought the Norrington symphony cycle (don't worry, l now have a wonderful Wand cycle thanks to watching you). In the last 4 years I have collected and listen to 400 of his recorded works in all genres of his 1000 pieces, and am absolutely amazed at how much of an adventure each one is. More interesting and attractive to me generally than Beethoven.

[@anthonycook6213]

I must add, that as a know-it-all in high school, and convinced (to that point) that all early 19th century chamber music had three movements, I nearly undid the cold war victory of the Apollo moon program by clapping with smug confidence after the third movement of the Trout Quintet where I was a member of audience of a concert being broadcast live by the Voice of America. Although I suddenly wished that I was on the moon instead being at the focal point of the horrified expressions of the quintet members, broadcast technicians, and everyone else in the audience, I am consoled by the thought that my ignorance did not significantly delay the eventual fall of the Soviet Union. And sorry Franz!

[@DavidJohnson-of3vh]

The Unfinished was also my intro to Schubert. It was from the large lp box (Reader's Digest), I think, that was full of 'masterworks'.

[@StinkinGoodAle3241]

I remember when I was little hearing a joke on television (maybe the Jackie Gleason show?) where one guy asked the other "If you could bring anybody from history, who would it be?" The second guy says "Franz Schubert" "Why?" "So he can finish his unfinished symphony" I have no idea why this bad joke stuck in my mind all these years later. Your list of Schubert melodies hits the nail on the head for me, too. And then when I first heard Stravinsky's Circus Polka, I still didn't know what the name of the big tune at the end was, but I found it really funny nonetheless.

[@jdistler2]

I discovered Schubert as a toddler through my mother's copy of the Adrian Boult Unfinished Symphony recording issued on Vanguard. We also had the 78s of Bruno Walter's New York Philharmonic Ninth Symphony, and I remember being fixated by the Scherzo. Fast forward to my ear-training class at the Juilliard Pre-College, where we had to sing songs from Die schöne Müllerin using solfege syllables. However, what finally hooked me big time were live performances of the final Quartet and the String Quintet in college, discovering the posthumous Sonata in B-flat, and hearing Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau sing Winterreise in concert. I played dozens of Schubert songs during the days when I accompanied singers, and slogged through most of his piano duets, little knowing that I would play the duets frequently in concert forty-plus years later.

[@vijenac_pelina]

My first encounter with Schubert was through The Smurfs TV series because the first theme of the Unfinished was used for scenes with Gargamel's castle, I think.

[@geertdecoster5301]

I was watching one summer a tv program on someone walking across the Alps in the footsteps of Hannibal. The guy was Bernard Levin and his humming of Schubert's “Trout” was my own intro

[@hobhood7118]

The first piece of classical music I 'got' at age 6 - I mean hearing the melodies as tunes and enjoying them - was the Trout Quintet. So I suppose that was what started the love of music that brings me to Dave's videos 54 years later. The other attraction was that it was pressed on red vinyl - does anyone know what version that was?

[@petertimoney3436]

My introduction to the Schubert Unfinished as a child was staying up late on a Saturday night to watch the horror double bill on TV which the UK did in the late 70s. I was already attracted to the theme music of The Black Cat (1934) because it sounded like the big tune in Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet and I knew it already as the theme to the serial Flash Gordon's trip to mars. The rest of the score haunted me and for years, pre internet, I struggled to find out what the many classical pieces were which the score was based on. Some I found accidentally on record or disc and others I found post Google. Rewritten or reorchestrated by Heinz Roemheld, Liszt B minor Sonata, Schumann Piano quintet, Schubert Unfinished, Liszt Les Preludes, Bach, Brahms, Beethoven etc, and the pre mentioned rewriting of Romeo and Juliet (apparently copyright was still an issue with the Tchaikovsky folks). Roemheld would go on to assist Korngold a year later with adapting several tone poems by Liszt used for the battle scenes to Captain Blood due to having too little time. The Black Cat movie was a wonderful fantasia of romantic music and even today in my mid 50s whenever I hear any of the pieces which were used in the film, including Schubert's Unfinished, I get a special glow of recognition which only really happens with childhood memory. I also have an early memory for his AVE Maria. Not a religious experience. Living in Scotland we got to visit a place called Loch Katrine (now the source of Glasgow's drinking water) which was the setting for Sir Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake poem from which Ellen's Gesang III (AVE Maria) was based. There is an island there called Ellen's Island where mass tourism from the 1830s encourages people to imagine the imaginary Ellen playing her harp and singing Ave Maria there. As a child you half believed such nonsense but it is a very beautiful spot and the song shares the beauty of the landscape. It really has nothing to do with church and it's a shame so many people think it a hymn when it's merely a poem by Walter Scott. Still my childhood memory is full of harps and women singing in the blowy (and thus inaudible) scottish landscape.

[@ho2201]

When I was a kid there were endless piano albums around crammed full of easy versions of the classics for beginners. 'Rosamunde' and 'Serenade' and suchlike in some basic key, and only ever two pages long, so you never had to turn over. Along with books of easy piano duets that invariably contained the military march and more Rosamunde (again, with nothing more than three sharps or two flats to contend with). You could also find such old chestnuts as Rachmaninoff's 18th variation and bits of watered-down Beethoven and of course Voi che sapete in these child-friendly versions. I expect such classics for dummies' books are looked down on nowadays and I probably murdered Schubert many times over at the age of eight, but you got to know some wonderful melodies and play them with care (for the benefit of your admiring parents) and so Schubert was part of life for me from an early age. It's only later you come to realise that what I thought I could conquer in a couple of piano lessons was actually something horribly complex. But familiarity with the piece was always a great start.

[@tom6693]

Think we were playing from those same albums! Still, watered down or not, it was fun to feel you were playing the classics. And I wonder if there were ever any piano students who did NOT play the 4-hand Marche Militaire for their teacher's recitals? I know I did, and I did it twice: the first time I was assigned the bass part (my teacher saying that with a boy and a girl sharing the bench, the girl should always have the "soprano" role!); and second, when I played it with another male student, my teacher allowed me to play the primo part only because the other kid wasn't quite able to handle its finger work. All great fun though.

[@ho2201]

@@tom6693 Happy days!

[@ilunga146]

I was full-grown (35) when I first heard "Wanderer Fantasie" in a record store in Georgetown (DC). I asked the clerk what it was, and he handed me the Philips Silverline CD by Alfred Brendel which also had D960 on it. It was on sale, 3 midprice Polygrams for $25, so I also bought Mozart PCs 23 & 27 (Brendel/Marriner) and HVK's Beethoven #9 (1977). And that was the beginning of my being a classical listener. Previously, I'd only bought things I'd heard in movies. Now that I think of it, I had Schubert's Piano Trio from Barry Lyndon from 1975, and I knew Ave Maria from being in Catholic school (also named St. Mary's, in NJ).

[@bbailey7818]

Dave, you are so right, Schubert is a composer who always seemed to be there one way or another, even without knowing it. I do remember a local TV station playing the 1931 Lugosi Dracula frequently on Friday nights. It has very little music. The title track is Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake which I liked a lot. But there's a later sequence at a concert which has a snatch of the Meistersinger Prelude and, later, after Dracula says something dark and ominous, we hear the beginning of the Unfinished with those dark and doom laden lower strings that really caught my ear. Didn't know what it was until much later, but there was Schubert. Early on, I had been fascinated with old records and once found one of those single sided Red Seals of Schumann-Heink singing Erlkonig. This one had a sticker on the back telling you what it was all about. And, man, could Frau Heink ever sell it, like your grandmother knowing just how to tell a story to have you on the edge of your seat. It came through the antique recording. I still prefer it to any other. In my teens I found a copy of the Great C Major, Toscanini NBC, the 1953 recording. (The cover was a great color shot of an alpine village.) Since I only had a small Magnavox player I didn't care from stereo. I loved the power, excitement and intoxicating lyricism of it and it got played a lot.

[@loganfruchtman953]

I first heard Schubert in the Baby Einstein videos. The music was reorchestrated and like 2 minutes long but the iconic tunes were there.

[@johnwright7557]

Schubert was also part of my life from an early age. When I was 7 I began piano lessons and it was a couple years later that I had Schubert’s Serenade (from Schwanengesang-but I thought it was a piano piece) in a piano book and learned it. It really stuck and for me was Schubert. I later learned the Marche Militaire-the solo piano version! My first Schubert record was a 45rpm of the Unfinished Symphony with Munch and the Boston Symphony that I played to death on my little record player. My parents had “graduated” from 78s by then! Another 45 that I loved was Chopin’s Heroic Polonaise with Jose Iturbi. I thought he was the greatest pianist and one that I wanted to emulate! I think I was about 9 or 10 when I started to listen to 45s.

[@d.r.martin6301]

As part of a two LP set by Casals and the Marlboro Fest. Orch., back in my second year in college. The "Unfinished" Symphony, of course.

[@toastonmitchell2636]

For a moment there I thought maybe you had a new overflow room 😂 Safe travels!!

[@ruramikael]

Every Christmas Eve at 3 pm, Swedish Television broadcast "From All of us to All of you" by Walt Disney or simply "The Christmas of Donald Duck" (Sweidsh Title). It begins in Santa's workshop, where all the toys march into Santa's big sack to the music of Marche Militaire. It must have been my first encounter, probably when I was seven months old.

[@cappycapuzi1716]

my story is kinda boring: it was the Great C major from the College library in Missouri, but I'm not remembering the specific recording. And to this day, the Great is my favorite orchestral composition of Schubert's. At points I was obsessed with it and have a number of recordings (though not as many as DW). My relationship with the Unfinished is more at arm's length: I find it too dark, especially the second movement (and no I'm not a pollyanna.....I listen to requiems, etc.). That's my very average story!

[@robertdandre94101]

At my very beginnings as a music lover....I bought and listened to the dgg ''festival of hits'' discs a lot....and among them Schubert, whom I discovered through his excerpts....these are especially his lieder and his chamber music which I like but also his piano music ..... when to the symphonies ..... for me it is not the intimate schubert that I learned to know and love .... .as long as at mass.....

[@stephenkeen2404]

In the womb is going to cover a lot of composers. You're a bit younger than me, so maybe you don't remember the schzero from Beethoven's 9th playing over the credits of Huntley/Brinkley news ("Good night Chet, Good night Dave.") But that was definitely the first Beethoven I ever heard. The Lone Ranger and Looney Tunes introduced me to Rossini. I remember when I first listened to Don Giovanni and Marriage of Figaro and thinking "so that's where those tunes come from." Who can really remember when they first heard the Nutcracker Suite? The list seems endless.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

I remember that vividly!

[@ewaldsteyn469]

How I discovered Schubert is actually part of HOW I DISCOVERED CLASSICAL MUSIC. Sorry for this being a bit of a lengthy story but let me tell it anyway: In my 1st 10 years I had no interest in music, especially classical music. I never heard any classical music in my whole family, neighbour or among friends. I also was never exposed to any bands playing classical music anywhere where I grew up in Pretoria, South Africa. Simply no exposure to classical music at all. Then at about 10, my twin brother and I finally started to experiment with our dad's turn table. As we went through is collection of LP at first we fell in love with the music of Ipitombi (a South African Zulu dance and singing group) and Roger Whitaker (especially his magnificent whistling songs). And then one day we discovered that my dad had some classical music LPs - why I don't know- even up to today I have never heard my dad listening to classical music. Intrigued, we started to played them one by one- AND IT BLEW US AWAY! ... and also blew Ipitombi and Roger Whitaker right out of our lives. Then my brother and I knew, this will be the music we will be listening to for the rest of our lives. A year of 2 after this South Africa was hit by HOOCKED ON CLASSICS (I assume you know what that is). Today you will have to pay me to listen to that, but for a young boy busy discovering classical music I just could not believe how many GREAT tunes I am hearing on HOOCKED ON CLASSICS - I just had to discover the music behind these Tunes. And the last great step in hoocking me and my brother for live was thanks to my wonderful mother and a great initiative off the RCA label. We came back from school one day, and my mother, who by now knew of her 2 boys' love for classical music, showed us 2 LPs she had just bough for us a local supermarket. It was the first 2 releases off a 24 LP budget priced set released by RCA to introduce newcomers to classical, including an extensive booklet about the music and the life of each composer. Every 2 weeks the next 2 issues was to be released. We counted the weeks down and made sure we were at that supermarket on the release day. The one time, being a long distance runner at school, I ran the 4 km to the supermarket to buy the next 2 releases. Arriving there, the new LP's were not on the shelve. I was in general a fairly shy boy at school who never would ask strangers for help. But that day I swallowed my shyness- in no way was I going to leave that store without the next 2 releases!!! So I went to see the manager -- He then went to the back of the store and returned with the next 2 releases -and I was in HEAVEN!! Today looking back, I must say this set's content was extremely well chosen for newcomers - Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Liszt, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Ravel, Rimsky-Korsakov, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov - and of coarse Schubert - with none other that his symphonies nos. 5 and 8 on one LP - no 5 was a delight, but 8 just mesmerized me - MAGNIFICIENT. My first discovery of Schubert - thankyou RCA and my mom.

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

Great story! Thank you for sharing it with us.

[@heatherharrison264]

I'm also old enough to have been around when Schubert was part of the cultural background. There wasn't a particular moment of discovery; it just seems like Schubert's music was always around. Of course, tunes from the most famous of his many unfinished symphonies were ubiquitous. Over time, I gradually heard more of his works, and now there is a lot of his music in my collection. I have even stepped into the dangerous rabbit hole of completions and performing versions of his various unfinished works from time to time. It's interesting to hear them. I find the primary melody of the scherzo of the "famous" unfinished symphony (No. 8) to be quite a catchy tune, and the unfinished Symphony No. 10 is a bizarre and radical musical experiment. However, with this sort of material, there is a substantial risk that meddling musicologists, conductors, and performers will transform Schubert into SCHUBERT [horse noises], as has unfortunately happened with BRUCKNER [horse noises] in the various editions of his symphonies.

[@stevemcclue5759]

In which Dave has a lamp-shade growing out of his head...

[@DavesClassicalGuide]

Exactly. It was either that or the toilet.

[@stephenkeen2404]

I'd assumed he was just being the life of the party!

[@stevemcclue5759]

@@DavesClassicalGuide Isn't that where you keep your Roger Norrington CDs?😁

[@nigelhaywood9753]

It is curious how we just know Schubert, almost as though as it were part of our genetic make-up. I don't think my mother used to listen to so much classical music but she definitely did use to turn the TV on to one of the channels that didn't actually show programmes during the day. I remember her listening to that while she was cleaning. It had continuous classical music on it and I definitely first heard lots of things on there for the first time. Probably lots of Schubert, I seem to think that I heard Faure's Masques et Bergamasques Suite on there as well as Prokofiev's classical symphony. I can totally remember the Lemon Pledge though!

[@robme9845]

I had this same thought a few years ago realizing how much Schubert was put into pop cartoon themes. Any child who watched cartoons on television knew more Schubert than any composer. There is also a theme I think in Die Winterreise which goes…. Dum Du Dump Dump Duuuuuuuuhhhhh???? frequently used by animators to depict the presence of a villain placing a tied up girl on the railroad tracks.

[@johnnelson3665]

He’s very similar to Beethoven. But original at the same time.

[@annakimborahpa]

1. I am tempted to write that I came to know Franz Schubert's music by way of J.S. Bach's six Schubler Chorales, for example, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (Sleepers Awake), BWV 645. However, that is not the case even though both composers had the gift for crafting an exquisite melody. 2. After Schubert's passing in 1828 and thereby leaving his 8th Symphony unfinished, the world had to wait until 1899 for Jean Sibelius' first Finnished symphony.

[@brabantstraat]

When Rachmaninov was asked why he never played any of the Schubert piano sonatas, he seemed surprised. "Schubert wrote sonatas?"

[@carlconnor5173]

I don’t have an interesting story to share. I simply discovered Schubert by listening to the Classical radio station.