Beethoven was for Schubert the master of all musical things. His aim was not only to equal his model but also to develop his own individual style, and it was not easy for him to achieve this goal. He wrote his first five symphonies with youthful carefreeness, but in the sixth he found the tension between musical imagination and formal compositional norms already so oppressive that for a time he was able to commit nothing but fragments to paper. It was not until the late autumn of 1822 that he succeeded in producing two symphonic movements that he let stand as signposts along the way to his own goal: he sent the “Unfinished Symphony” to the Graz Music Society because it had named him its honorary member.

The “Grand” Symphony in C major by Franz Schubert bears the official date of 1828. After its premiere in 1839 Robert Schumann had the highest words of praise for it: “These are human voices, all the instruments are brilliant beyond measure – and then this heavenly length.” He thus supplied posterity with the key terms that continue to be used today to describe Schubert’s symphonic music.

The Musikkollegium has been active in Winterthur since 1629 – which makes this orchestra one of Europe’s most richly traditional musical institutions. Today the orchestra presents approximately seventy concerts per season, some forty of which are held in Winterthur in its own concert series in the Winterthur Stadthaus built by Gottfried Semper. The ensemble also increasingly performs in leading concert series in foreign countries. It draws on a membership of fifty musicians and thus is able to focus its repertoire on works of the classical and early romantic periods as well as on music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Douglas Boyd has been the principal conductor of the Musikkollegium Winterthur since 2009.