Thomas Dausgaard - Schumann: Symphony No. 1 in B flat Major

This disc includes Schumann's very first endeavors in the symphony genre, beginning with the Zwickau Symphony from 1832-33. Of the two completed movements, only the first was ever performed in the composer's lifetime. That is also the one recorded here, performed from a copy of the manuscript score. Almost 10 years after the Zwickau, Schumann finally completed a symphony, the Spring Symphony, inspired by a poem by Adolf Bottger, Schumann nevertheless dispensed with the original movement titles before the symphony was published. Composed in the same year as Symphony No. 1, the Overture, Scherzo and Finale to some extent also belongs to Schumann's symphonic oeuvre – a divertimento-like sequence of movements, which Schumann actually offered to a publisher as his Second Symphony.