Unfinished Business | 4 July 2026

Hope Metropolitan Orchestra

Conductor: Helen Thomas

This is a programme that addresses various pieces of unfinished, musical business ...

Programme:

Smyth: Symphonie für kleines Orchester

Schubert: Symphony in B minor, Unfinished

R. Schumann: Overture, Scherzo and Finale

Haydn: Symphony No. 45, Farewell

Ethel Smyth’s Symphonie, written between 1878-1884, is a single movement work recently edited and completed by Peter Fender. Schubert packed Romantic drama and glorious melodic invention into just two movements but composed only sketches of a third movement in his famous Unfinished symphony. Robert Schumann’s Overture, Scherzo and Finale, written in just three weeks, has an ambiguous status. At first Schumann considered it to be his second symphony but he later suggested that the three movements could be performed as standalone works. Haydn’s Farewell is a fully-fledged, four movement symphony but the final movement is an amusing protest at the orchestra’s employment conditions in the court of Esterházy which still has resonance today.