How do you plan a programme to include Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony? The answer, adopted by the Watford Symphony Orchestra for this concert, is to tackle this great work at the start.

It is on a large scale, but because Schubert did not complete the third movement or even start a fourth movement, it lacks some of the sort of musical statements that one expects.

On this occasion the orchestra had a visiting conductor, Stuart Dunlop, who has wide conducting experience, and in responding to him they were in excellent form. Schubert, like his older contemporary Beethoven, lived in the borderland between late classical and early Romantic music.

What a great symphonic composer Schubert was! No doubt, if he had completed the usual four movements in this symphony, his eighth (in B minor) would have ranked even higher in the orchestral league.

From their good, steady start, at a comparatively modest allegro moderato, the orchestra achieved almost everything that Schubert asks of them. The ingenious exploitation of his melodies, the adventurous harmonic language and the expressive rhythms, the poetic structures and emotions were sympathetically expressed.

The strings used a modest vibrato, played with good tone, and achieved the right balance with the other sections. The horns, which can be a weak spot in amateur orchestras and even in some professional ones, excelled themselves. If only the second movement was not the end.

To complete the first half of the concert, where one often expects a concerto, we heard a work for solo voice with the orchestra. Samantha Price (mezzo soprano) sang Mahler’s Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer). This is a group of four songs, linked with others, which Mahler set later. The German words, with an English translation, were usefully included with the printed programme.

This is a comparatively early work of this composer and has something in common with Schubert’s song cycles, though composed 50 years later. It was a joy to hear these well known songs.

The Clarendon Muse is small for a concert hall, and I wondered how Samantha would sound in a larger room; she has a pleasant voice, and sang with accurate intonation and proper phrasing. The complex orchestral accompaniment gave her every support. She made a comparatively late start in her musical career, and we can expect that in time her voice will become stronger and her German clearer.

After the interval, what could the orchestra play that would match the depth of what had gone before? As a song writer, Schumann is one of those whom we speak of in the same breath as Schubert and Mahler; but with the best will in the world, he was not their equal as a symphonist.

So was it reasonable that we were bound to compare his Third Symphony, the Rhenish, with the Unfinished? And after their earlier efforts, perhaps the orchestra was a bit tired. But this symphony was an acceptable partner with what had gone before, has well known themes and was agreeable listening to end the concert.