JAVS Spring 2013

N EW M USIC R EVIEWS

by Dwight Pounds, Andrew Braddock, and Hartmut Lindemann

despite the reputation of the viola as a pensionsinstru ment . Schubert proved himself to be more than a sectional player, however. Levin writes: Schubert supplemented his income by composing works for both theater and church for both orchestra and chamber ensembles. His work was respected, though not widely disseminated, and includes two viola concertos, one in C major and one in E-flat major. The former . . . is a charming but lightweight piece. The latter work, however, is much more substantial and is a welcome addition to the modern violist’s repertoire. 2 The C-major concerto mentioned by Levin has been the more well known of Schubert’s concerti, owing to Schott’s 1967 edition and Gérard Caussé’s 1993 recording. Levin’s approach to the concerto is very methodical, academically correct, and scrupulous as he exhausts every possibility in reconstructing the concerto in as close to its final form as possible. His task was to closely examine four extant copies of the concerto (not all of them complete), then determine the order in which they were written by examining changes and additions to the most basic of the copies. Changes among the copies included an expanded orchestra, and additions included added and/or altered measures, trills and other ornamentation, and adjusted orchestral instrumentation, presumably by the composer himself. It is interesting to note that numerous fingerings and other performance mark ings—at least two layers—were available to the edi tor, but a set of “original” parts listed in the Zeyringer lexicon as located in the archives of Hug & Co. Musikverlag in Zurich, turned out to be a false lead as no trace of such parts could be found, depriving Levin of a valuable resource. Schubert doubles the solo viola part in tutti sections with those of the orchestral viola or cello/bass line in the full score throughout the concerto, though con

Concerto in E-flat Major for Viola and Orchestra by Joseph Schubert (1757–1837) Edited by Andrew Levin Middleton, WI: A-R Publications Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era series Full Score: 8 pages introduction, 4 plates, 97 pages full score, 5 pages critical report ISBN: 978-0-89579-764-3 ISSN: 0147-0086 Price: Score = $144.00 Price: Parts (solo viola and piano reduction) = $36.00 Orchestral parts available from the publisher on a rental basis Orchestra is more like opening a book than a piece of printed music. Eight pages of historical perspec tive and formal analysis and four plates greet the reader before the first page of Schubert’s score is seen. These pages are an expansion of Levin’s article on this concerto published in JAVS , vol. 16, no. 3, in 2000. 1 Rarely is a performer privy to the depth of information pertaining to a given work before the first note is played. Joseph Schubert (1757–1837, and no known rela tionship to Franz Schubert) obviously was a contem porary of Mozart (1756–1791) and was also heavily influenced by the Viennese high Classical style. He was a violist in the court orchestra of Dresden for nearly fifty years, from 1788 to 1837, lending credi bility to Franz Zeyringer’s suggestion that capable— though unheralded—professional violists in addition to Carl Stamitz were active in Europe at this time, Reviewed by Dwight Pounds Opening Andrew Levin’s edition of Joseph Schubert’s Concerto in E-flat for Viola and

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