Overture in D major D950 (“In the Italian style”)

Adagio – Allegro giusto

Towards the end of 1816 the Italian Opera Company made its first visit to Vienna and, with Tancredi and L’inganno felice, started a Rossini craze that was to last for years. Not everyone was impressed but even Beethoven, who deplored his “frivolousness,” had to admire Rossini‘s “talent for pretty tunes.” Schubert, on the other hand, was enchanted, not least by the overtures. Having started his Sixth Symphony in October 1817, he set it aside and, in an apparent effort to assimilate what was clearly the must-have style of the day, got to work on two concert overtures, in D major and C major respectively, both of which were completed within a few weeks.

Although the title “In the Italian style” does not derive from the composer himself, it is an apt description of both works. The Overture in C major is the more successful in terms of emulating its stylistic model but, even without an authentic “Rossini crescendo,” the present work in D major is scarcely less characteristic and is probably the more interesting of the two scores.

It is highly unlikely that Beethoven would have been present when the overture in D was first performed at the Roman Emperor Hotel in Vienna in 1818 but, if he had been, he might well have thought it superior to the average Rossini overture. Certainly, with its sombre beginning and its lovely B minor melody on the strings magically modulating to F major on woodwind, there is nothing frivolous about the slow introduction. As for pretty tunes, Schubert was no less talented in this respect than Rossini himself, as is demonstrated here by a choice example on violins as the key definitively changes to D major and the tempo to Allegrio giusto. There is another, similarly cheerful tune introduced by oboe and bassoon. But Schubert is more interested in the first, which he recalls and develops a little before changing the tempo again for an unexpectedly dramatic coda.

Schubert liked the Overture in D so much, incidentally, that when in 1820 he came to write his    Zauberharfe Overture (now known as the Rosamunde Overture) he borrowed much of the material from the Adagio introduction for the equivalent section of the new work.