There seems to be no end to Schubert's Ninth. Thankfully so. Because (you have been warned!) if you hear it live, chances are you will go into a trance. Then you only want one thing: for it never to end. A symphony of heavenly dimensions, said fellow composer Schumann. He discovered the score after Schubert's death in a chest of drawers at his brother's house. It remains a mystery how the mortally ill Schubert could write something so beautiful months before his death. And he was barely thirty-one.
As twenty-somethings, Prokofiev and Rachmaninov wrote this Piano Concerto and this 'youth' symphony. The genius and sense of life splashed out. 'Sparkling and virtuoso' The New York Times recently wrote about Venezuelan piano soloist Sergio Tiempo, who once made his debut at Concertgebouw Amsterdam as a fourteen-year-old.
