The Shepherd on the Rock, composed in the final year of Schubert’s life, was in a certain sense a commission. The opera singer Anna Milder-Hauptmann, the fi rst Leonore in Beethoven’s Fidelio, had asked Schubert in letters written between 1824 and 1825 to write a grand scene for voice for her. Yet he only finally started work on it in autumn 1828.

He used three different poems as the basis for his work, combining them to form an equally brilliant and atmospheric musical scene. The clarinet a...