When still a music student, Franz Schubert confided to a friend, “Secretly, in my heart of hearts, I hope to be able to make something out of myself—but who can do anything after Beethoven?”

The answer came a few years later, and from a surprising source.

By the autumn of 1817, Rossini’s music had conquered Vienna—and Schubert, hearing it for the first time, was liberated by the experience.   As we'll hear in this hour, it was to shape his work from that point on.

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