Schubert: Operatic Overtures – review

The youthful Schubert wrote some 20 stage works which remain almost entirely unknown and unperformed. Judging from some of these 10 overtures, that's hardly surprising. The future supreme master of lieder has yet to find his feet in these often bombastic sub-Beethovian experiments but they do offer a taste of teenage Franz's burgeoning musical imagination. Several of his ignored early operas survive but Manfred Huss and his excellent Viennese players restrict themselves to the overtures, so we are left to imagine what Alfonso und Estrella , Fierabras and Der Teufel als Hydraulicus might sound like complete.