Where does it come from, Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s special affinity with Schubert? First of all, it is the result of many years of work, the fruit of untiring study of the scores and the messages hidden in them. Harnoncourt has conducted cycles of the symphonies several times since the 1980s; he has frequently tackled the two great masses. And, more emphatically  than any other conductor of our day, he champions Schubert's operas, which are still rarely performed. He is known for his categorical rejection of repertoire building, however. "Whenever I studied a work and a series of performances was followed by a tour, if possible I did not conduct it again for many years, "Harnoncourt says during an interview at his house near Lake Atter in Upper Austria. "The next time it was on a programme I studied it again, like a premiere."

Music as the "language of the inexpressible"
Schubert, who even less than other composers can be managed with skill and good taste alone - with structural clarity and rhythmic energy, for example - benefits particularly from such a painstaking approach. "Music is a language of its own. And if there is anything that clearly expresses the idea that music itself is the language of the inexpressible, it is the music of Schubert," Harnoncourt once declared. Anyone who wants to understand this language needs time, peace and quiet and seclusion - the greatest possible distance from the music business. Nikolaus Harnoncourt withdraws to his study for weeks with the scores and all the resources at his disposal. The details of the interpretation must be re-examined, all decisions worked out again and justified convincingly. The actual rehearsal phase is thus reserved for the subtleties of the interpretation, in an intense verbal exchange with the musicians.
"Schubert has always accompanied me; he was the personification of music for me. I came to the other greats like Beethoven and Mozart much later," says the conductor. He became familiar with Schubert, the only master of the Classical-Romantic era who was born in Vienna and deeply rooted there, already during his childhood, thanks to a particular historical and cultural situation. Harnoncourt was born in Berlin - his father was working as an engineer on the construction of the Spree-Havel canal - but the family returned to Graz a short time later. In Styria the boy learned a language which is closely related to that of Schubert. In the country he heard folk music that had clearly influenced the composer's musical idiom. Even more important, Nikolaus Harnoncourt grew up in a family where music-making in the home was still a daily practice. Almost all of the seven siblings played an instrument; the father, a skilled pianist and talented amateur composer, often wrote brief exercises at the appropriate technical level for the children. Schubert, the master of the intimate emotional statement, traditionally played an important role during these private concerts. "As soon as I could, I went through his chamber music with my father and my brother, and I played the 'Trout Quintet' for the first time at the age of thirteen." One of the boys favourite works was the late E flat major Piano Trio, for Harnoncourt still "one of the greatest pieces of chamber music ever written".

The unappreciated symphonist
As was the case throughout the entire 19th century after the Second World War, when Nikolaus Harnoncourt studied in Vienna and began his professional career as a cellist with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the reception of Schubert’s music was essentially limited to the smaller, more or less non-public formats: the songs, piano pieces and a few chamber works. The young Alfred Brendel championed Schubert, who still received little recognition as a sonata composer. The early symphonies were played only occasionally at that time, Harnoncourt later recounted. Repeats within movements were usually omitted; the cuts were particularly drastic in the "Great" C major Symphony, which was shortened by approximately fifteen minutes. Unlike Beethoven, Bruckner or Brahms, Schubert the symphonist had no real advocates among the great conductors of that day, Harnoncourt recalls. Even those who conducted the "Unfinished" or the C major Symphony more frequently did not give the ambitious young cellist the feeling that "they associated a personal message with it".
As we know, Schubert's contemporaries regarded him almost exclusively as a song composer; the symphonies were discovered only gradually after his death. It was Mendelssohn who conducted the premiere of the "Great" C major Symphony at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1839. The "Unfinished" was not heard for the first time until 1865, at Vienna's Musikverein, and Symphonies no. 1 and 3 had to wait until 1881 for their public premieres. The question of whether Schubert's youthful works, such as the early symphonies, should be published or performed at all - which Johannes Brahms, as co-editor of the first edition of Schubert's complete works, initially answered negatively - was not entirely resolved until the later 20th century. Nothing prevented an adequate understanding of Schubert’s large-scale works more than their constant comparison with Beethoven. Whereas Beethoven treats his thematic material stringently, starting logical processes aimed at a recognisable goal, Schuberts formal development does not have a concrete focus, according to the common line of reasoning.

"Schubert spoke in dialect!"
Schubertian dramaturgy is actually characterised less by linear development than relationships between harmonies, themes and forms. Repetitions in shifting illumination, juxtaposed sequences and associative modulations, even shocklike disruptions take on lives of their own. Schubert does not force the forms into a strict overall plan but follows them with inspired intuition so that they are able to reveal their own inherent value. In the process, the formal structure nearly always results in vastness, expansiveness. Hence the proverbial "heavenly lengths" that Schumann praised when he discovered the "Great" C major Symphony among the composer's manuscripts in 1839. "Compared to Beethoven the architect, Schubert composed like a sleepwalker," Alfred Brendel observed in 1974 in an essay for his recording of the late piano sonatas - explicitly pointing out, however, how closely "naivety and sophistication are related" in Schubert.
Nikolaus Harnoncourt must have heard such comparisons often during his career as a Schubert interpreter, but they obviously interested him only marginally. He concentrates less on the formal elements in and of themselves than on the musical statement and idiomatic characteristics. For one thing, there is Schubert's penchant for "Viennese foll music", which Harnoncourt otherwise finds in this form only with Joseph Lanner, Johann Strauss and Alban Berg. "Schubert spoke in Viennese dialect, he often played for the dance. You hear dances in all of his works. That already begins in the First Symphony, the second theme of which is unmistakably Viennese. It is not even important just what a minuet is, a waltz or an écossaise. But you hear immediately that when this ‘oom pah-pah, oom pah-pah’ appears in the accompaniment, it should not be metrically correct, not played ‘academically’. It would never have occurred to Schubert that three quavers could be of equal length."

Joie de vivre at the edge of the grave
Only at first glance does it appear paradoxical that the affirmation of life expressed in the dancelike energy and vernacular idiom always seems to be combined with its supposed opposite: the "confrontation with grief, despair and the last things in life", which the conductor sees as the composers principal expressive level. After all, Viennese joie de vivre always plays out at the edge of the grave, says Harnoncourt. "The Viennese talk more about dying than anyone else. The shift from extreme cheerfulness to extreme sadness occurs in a flash and quite naturally in Schubert. I believe that Schubert constantly lived with these extremes as a composer and as a man. Every year he wrote poetry that always expressed something extremely sad and extremely funny at the same time." The central medium for such alternating emotions is not only the often abrupt dynamics but also the richly shaded, extremely bold Schubertian harmony. In his Berlin performances Harnoncourt devoted particular attention to sensitive emphasis, subtly differentiated light, colour and distancing effects. He is convinced that Schubert was interested in piano tuning - that he was very knowledgeable about the specific intonation of chords in the various regions of the circle of fifths, Harnoncourt adds.

Brilliant early works
The conductor's extreme reluctance to judge Schubert's works - especially the earlier and less familiar works - using outside criteria or to compare them with each other may be a key aspect of his uncompromisingly serious interpretations. "I have a high regard for the early symphonies because I consider them to be masterpieces of their day. They are on a par with the great works of their time and far above those of the average well-known composer. For me, one work is not a precursor to the next. When I trulv experience the First Symphony, it is the greatest work there is because the others do not exist yet." Thus, one should not consider the first six symphonies from the perspective of the "Great" C major Symphony; they are the creations of a composing child prodigy. Schubert wrote them while he was still a schoolboy and young assistant teacher during the brief period between 1813 and 1818. The first symphonies were intended for the orchestra of the Vienna Stadtkonvikt [boarding school], where he was educated, the later works for a private orchestra of up to forty musicians that had grown out of the Schubert family's quartet circle and appeared before invited audiences.

An unmistakably unique sound
"Quietly and little troubled by the talking and noise of his fellow students unavoidable at the school he sat at his little table...   and wrote easily and fluently without many corrections, as if it had to be just so and not otherwise." One of Schubert's schoolmates recorded this memory of the young composer, and in fact the clean autograph of the First Symphony, which was completedat the end of October 1813, confirms the incredible self-assurance of the sixteen-year-old's treatment of the large format. Schubert drew on a broad knowledge of repertoire, which he had acquired in the Schubert family's string quartet - in some cases, from arrangements of contemporary symphonies. Moreover, he had played for several years in the orchestra of the Vienna Konvikt, whose music collection included thirty Haydn symphonies alone, as well as important works by Mozart and Beethoven. Schubert had already composed three orchestral overtures in 1813, thus he was no longer a novice. The young genius was not only able to work effortlessly with the genres of his day, he also found his own unique sound immediately. "It is remarkable, you already hear it in the First: that is Schubert! He writes music which incorporates elements of Haydn and Mozart. But the melody - that can only be him," says Harnoncourt. "Schubert must have been kissed by the muse at birth; he had a Viennese melodic style and a feeling for harmony that no other composer before him had."
Apparently the composer himself later no longer regarded the early symphonies as full-fledged works. In 1828, the year of his death, when he was asked by the Schott publishing house for a list of works suitable for publication, he mentioned only one of the symphonies, that in C major, known today as No. 8 - "so that you are aware of my striving towards the highest in art". Nikolaus Harnoncourt thinks this is completely natural: "Almost all composers, with the exception of Bach perhaps, no longer acknowledged their earlier works after they had developed further." In Schubert's case the two later symphonies are separated from the earlier works by a clear break of several years. During this period the composer went through a crisis which must have plunged him into serious doubt, both personally and professionally. In early 1818, shortly after completing the Sixth Symphony, in which he had responded skilfully and with clever irony to the Rossini frenzy in Vienna caused by the performance of Tancredi, a process of increasing awareness seems to have set in which would inhibit not only the symphonist but also the instrumental composer for years. During intensive study ol Beethoven Schubert sought his own formal approach, which could exist independently of Beethoven. Fragments accumulated, both in the genre of the piano sonata and the symphony. Three of these symphonic drafts attempt strange experiments in which Schubert leaves the Classicism of his earlier works far behind.

Perfection of the “Unfinished”
Nikolaus Harnoncourt has long devoted himself to the abandoned symphonic attempts. In 1989 he conducted the premiere of Luciano Berio's Rendering in Amsterdam, the "recomposition" of a symphony based on the fragment of D 936a from the year of Schubert's death. "The symphonic fragments are condensed scores based on piano sketches. Schubert apparently had ideas which were guickly superseded," Harnoncourt is convinced. "He made a draft but then did not complete it. He must have sensed that it was no longer what he wanted to say. But in 1822 came a work for which he obviously had a concept for all four movements, later known as the "Unfinished" Symphony. Schubert wrote out the first two movements completely for all the instruments; it is a fair copy. They are followed by several bars of a scherzo, but I am certain that there must have been a moment at which Schubert said to himself: the work is perfect. I cannot imagine that anyone can continue playing after the end of the second movement. I can never play this work at any other place during the concert than at the end. There is nothing after that! There is also a chronological proximity to Schubert's short story Mein Traum [My Dream]. Only there do you see what a poet he was! I can superimpose the two movements of the "Unfinished" on the two chapters of Mein Traum."
In 1938 the musicologist Arnold Schering pointed out for the first time the parallels between the allegorical story, dating from early July 1822, and the Symphony, which Schubert began a few months later. Harnoncourt has investigated these connections in detail but nevertheless advises caution. "For me, Mein Traum is a literary version of an experience that played out between Schubert and his father after the death of his mother. It is obvious that such inspirations find expression in a musician of his sensitivity. But I cannot imagine that Schubert wanted to tell his listeners anything concrete about his life. Everything that I experience as an artist, that is what I am as a person afterwards - it is part of my emotional repertoire, I use it in my art. But I don't recount my experience itself!" Schubert's crisis was by no means resolved with the "Unfinished", however; in 1824 the composer described himself in a long letter to his friend Leopold Kupelwieser as "the unhappiest and most miserable person in the world" and announced that he was going to "pave the way towards a grand symphony" with several chamber works. He began working on this "grand" symphony in C major during the summer of 1825 - in Harnoncourt’s eyes, no less than "an immense structure in which Schubert truly reinvents the symphony".

"Aura of the inexplicable"
The conductor does not think much of the tendency of musicologists to describe this monumental and expansive contribution to the genre as a historically important, momentous alternative to Beethoven's models. "There are only personal paths. The genius always has something that none of us are aware of. For me, the great thing about it is that it can never be explained. An inspired work always has an aura of the inexplicable. At the instant in which I interpret and explain it, I may be right for a moment - and at the next moment I am already wrong. It means nearlv everything it says, and the opposite as well. "Verbally, he is actually no match at all for a masterpiece like this, Harnoncourt admits. "It goes to the limits of what is bearable, and I frequently meet listeners who feel the same way. They are shaken to the core. I believe that anyone vvho has experienced this masterpiece is no longer the same as before."
Nikolaus Harnoncourt takes Schubert's music personally in the true sense of the word; he hears its ethical appeal as though it were Rilke's "You must change your life". The composers transforming, existentially challenging energy is even more palpable in Harnoncourt's interpretations of the two late masses. The fact that no occasion can be concretely documented for the composition of the tvvo works could suggest that the still young composer saw an opportunity to finally introduce himself to a larger public with the highly popular genre of the Mass Ordinary, with which he had been familiar since his childhood - a goal he also pursued with his symphonies and operas. He worked on the A flat major Mass for three years altogether, from 1819 to 1822. Schubert liked the work very much himself and said he thought it had "turned out well". The court music director, Josef Eybler, to whom Schubert handed it over for performance, had no use for the demanding work, however, perhaps because it did not reflect the preferences of the Emperor, who expected masses to be "short, not too hard to perform".

The late masses as music of death
By refusing to make any concessions to prevailing tastes, by repeatedly choosing unorthodox compositional solutions and adopting unusual theological approaches, Schubert made deeply personal statements in official guise.Nikolaus Harnoncourt does not regard the two masses as "acts of religious devotion" but rather recognises in them music "of tremendous explosiveness and transcendental power" in which "Schubert's passionate effort to come to terms with death" can be heard. Unlike some Schubert specialists, he does not believe that the composer distanced himself from institutionalised religion by omitting certain passages of text in the Credo - particularly those which refer to belief in the Catholic church. "It is not true that Schubert did not set certain lines because he did not believe in them - that would be a superficial interpretation," Harnoncourt once said. "For centuries there were mass compositions in which particular sections were set for instruments alone, as it they were speaking tones."

Composing contrary to all patterns
Nikolaus Harnoncourt's plea for an unsettling Schubert, one who questions conventional criteria, would not be understandable if he did not champion works which - despite the exceptional standing of their composer - have never found a place in the repertoire. Alfonso und Estrella, the three-act opera composed in 1821/1822 to a libretto by Schubert's friend Franz von Schober, is such a work. It was not staged during Schubert's lifetime, and Franz Liszt, who conducted the premiere in Weimar in 1854, regarded the undertaking as "an act of reverence", a kind of settlement of a "debt of honour" to the esteemed master. Nikolaus Harnoncourt does not accept the standard arguments about the lack of dramatic impact in Schubert's operas. "I know the comment ‘wonderful music, weak text’only too well. But people say that who don’t even come up to Schubert's calf and talk over his head! Like almost everything Schubert composed, this work is an absolutely new concept. It does not fit into the pattern that came from Italy and became the standard in Vienna - it is original Schubert. This opera has something unique about it: there is a country that cannot even exist. Some of the characters live there, and the others live in the kingdom of Léon. This juxtaposition of reality and unreallty, the worlds of Mauregato and Froila, you cannot describe it without becoming enchanted yourself."
Nikolaus Harnoncourt says that one should not judge a work by the expectations attached to it but rather the expectations by the work. His music-making calls for aesthetic openness and perhaps a minimum of trust in a composer like Schubert, even when he sets out on difficult terrain. In his still thought-provoking book Real Presences, the literary critic George Steiner described the moral dimension of an interpretation in trenchant words twenty-fife years ago. Unlike the reviewer or literary critic, the performer must take responsibility for his actions with his own being, he must make a real decision, Steiner believes. "His readings, his enactments of chosen meanings and values, are not those of external survey. They are a commitment at risk, a response which is, in the root sense, responsible." This responsibility is also binding on the audience. And it can only mean one thing: do not judge - listen!