50 greatest symphonies
the Vienna Symphony Orchestra
Tom Service’s survey of the 50 symphonies that changed classical music
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50 essential symphonies: what have we missed from our list?
Published:3:05 PM47
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Symphony guide: Beethoven’s Ninth (‘Choral’)
Published:7:00 AM26
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Symphony guide: Dvořák’s 9th ‘From the New World’
Dvořák’s final symphony, with its famous Largo, is one of classical music’s best loved works. Tom Service separates its facts from its fictions
Published:12:57 PM16
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Symphony guide: Tchaikovsky’s Sixth (‘Pathetique’)
Forget, first of all, its mis-translated moniker. Tchaikovsky’s final symphony might be about death, but it’s the piece he termed ‘the best thing I have composed’ and is a confident and supremely energetic work
Published:7:00 AM73
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Symphony guide: Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique
The most innovative symphony of the 19th century was born from diabolical passions
Published:7:00 AM11
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Symphony guide: Vaughan Williams’s A Pastoral Symphony
The word “pastoral” disguises the true intentions of Vaughan Williams’s third symphony, which confronted the horrors of the first world war
Published:3:40 PM38
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Symphony guide: Beethoven’s Third (‘Eroica’)
The story of the dedication of Beethoven’s Third is the stuff of symphonic legend. Whatever the truth, the victory at the end of the piece doesn’t just stand for Napoleon, or Beethoven, but for the possibilities of the symphony itself
Published:7:00 AM42
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Symphony guide: Mahler’s Ninth
It’s usual to interpret Mahler’s last completed symphony as a prefiguring of his death. But different conductors make the work mean very different things
Published:7:00 AM29
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Symphony guide: Beethoven’s Sixth (‘Pastoral’)
Beethoven’s Pastoral is no musical cul-de-sac, writes Tom Service. It’s a radical work, and in its final movement is music more purely spine-tingling and life-enhancingly joyful than almost anywhere else in his output
Published:7:00 AM27
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Symphony guide: Mahler’s 6th
In the first of 10 symphony guides to coincide with performances at this year’s Proms, Tom Service looks at the triumphs, tragedies and controversies of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony.
Published:7:00 AM49
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Symphony guide: Knussen’s Third
Symphony guide: Knussen’s third symphony is only 15 minutes in length but it covers a massive musical and emotional spectrum
Published:7:00 AM26
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Symphony guide: Liszt’s Faust Symphony
Liszt’s Faust Symphony blows the bogus symphonic vs programme music debate out of the water
Published:7:00 AM25
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Symphony guide: Louise Farrenc’s Third
Farrenc’s symphony is as impressively energetic and structurally satisfying as any of Mendelssohn’s or Schumann’s symphonies – so does that make it “male” or “female”? Who cares? Enjoy getting to know this shamefully neglected work, writes Tom Service
Published:7:00 AM15
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Symphony guide: Schubert’s Ninth (‘the Great’)
Schubert’s ninth symphony quotes Beethoven’s own ninth. An homage – ironic or not – or his own statement of grand symphonic intent? Tom Service unpicks Schubert’s great, and final symphony
Published:7:00 AM18
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Symphony guide: Lutosławski’s Third
This most convincing of post-tonal symphonies, can we hear Lutosławski’s work as a protest piece? One thing is certain: the more you enter its symphonic labyrinth, the more you’ll discover.
Published:7:00 AM7
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Symphony guide: Bruckner’s 6th
Bruckner’s "saucy" sixth is the symphony that disproves those lazy received opinions about his music
Published:7:00 AM14
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Symphony guide: Mozart’s 41st (‘Jupiter’)
Mozart’s 41st symphony – the last he composed – is full of postmodernism, palimpsests, and pure exhilaration
Published:7:00 AM32
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Symphony guide: Janáček’s Sinfonietta
With its military bands, dazzling fanfares, and cinematic jump-cuts, Janáček’s Sinfonietta is a unique symphonic proposition, sounding as new now as it did at its premiere in 1926.
Published:7:00 AM20
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Symphony guide: Brahms’s Fourth
This symphony might a reliable and over-familiar staple on concert programmes, but listen to it with fresh ears. It contains some of the darkest and deepest music in the 19th century, writes Tom Service
Published:7:00 AM77
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Symphony guide: Mozart’s 29th
The 18-year-old composer’s 29th symphony in A major might not have changed musical history, but it changed Tom Service‘s life.
Published:8:46 AM21
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Symphony guide: Franck’s D minor
César Franck’s only symphony has all but disappeared from our concert halls. That’s a great shame, says Tom Service. This is a remarkable and radical work.
Published:7:00 AM16
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Symphony guide: Copland’s Third
Aaron Copland’s monumental symphony gave post-war America what it needed – ‘the Great American Symphony’.
Published:7:00 AM12
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Symphony guide: Johann Christian Bach’s Sixth
JC Bach’s symphonies aren’t just important because of their influence on the young Mozart. They’re signature works of the 18th century – and his G minor symphony, Op 6 no 6, is arguably the darkest and most dramatic he composed
Published:1:22 PM5
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Symphony guide: Elliott Carter’s Symphonia
Not only is Carter’s Symphonia the largest orchestral work he ever composed – shortly before he turned 90 – but it’s also one of the most significant symphonies of the late 20th century
Published:11:16 AM29
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Symphony guide: William Walton’s First
Walton wanted to blow his contemporaries out of the symphonic water with his First, and with this volcanic eruption of dark, sensual power, he did just that.
Published:7:00 AM6
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Tom Service on classical musicSymphony guide: Brahms’s First
Listen to Brahms’s first symphony with fresh ears. It’s a piece that took on history – and won.
Published:9:40 AM26
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Symphony guide: Sibelius’s Seventh
Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony, an unprecedented 22-minute single-movement, contains all the drama of much longer pieces. But it’s also, some say, a symphonic scream.
Published:7:00 AM74
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Symphony guide: John Adams’s Harmonielehre
It might not be called a symphony, but Adams’s 1985 work is one of the late 20th century’s most significant and sophisticated examples of the form
Published:7:00 AM27
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Symphony guide: Nielsen’s Fourth
The Danish composer wanted his fourth symphony – ‘The Inextinguishable’ – to be a manifesto for what he thought of as the fundamental life-force of music, writes Tom Service
Published:7:00 AM12
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Symphony guide: Saint-Saëns’s Third (the Organ symphony)
Don’t consign Saint-Saëns’s organ symphony to the orchestral glue-factory for knackered thoroughbreds. This was a cutting-edge – and gloriously tuneful – work.
Published:7:00 AM23
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Symphony guide: Myaskovsky’s Tenth
Composer of 27 symphonies, Myaskovsky’s tenth is – in his own words – ‘as massive as if it were made of iron’. Tom Service gets his welding tools out
Published:4:58 PM5
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Symphony guide: Beethoven’s Eighth
It’s one of the shortest, weirdest, but most compelling symphonies of the 19th century, writes Tom Service
Published:7:00 AM19
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Symphony guide: Mozart’s 31st (‘Paris’)
‘I hope that even these idiots will find something in it to like’, wrote the young composer of his Parisian audience. Calculated to please, Mozart’s brilliantly wrought and supremely confident symphony is still delighting audiences nearly 250 years later.
Published:7:00 AM19
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Symphony guide: Tchaikovsky’s First
Tchaikovsky’s first symphony remodelled the form into a truly Russian style, staking out territory that his five other symphonies continued to explore
Published:7:00 AM31
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Symphony guide: Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms
New sounds, forms and shapes define the Symphony of Psalms, a profoundly unironic expression of Stravinsky’s unique approach to the psalms, the symphony and even his faith, writes Tom Service
Published:4:48 PM18
About 52 results for 50 greatest symphonies
http://www.theguardian.com/music/series/50-greatest-symphonies
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