50 greatest symphonies
Portrait of Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) – his Sixth Symphony changed at a stroke what a symphony could be.
Tom Service’s survey of the 50 symphonies that changed classical music
50 essential symphonies: what have we missed from our list?
Published:3:05 PM47
Symphony guide: Beethoven’s Ninth (‘Choral’)
Published:7:00 AM26
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
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
Symphony guide: Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique
The most innovative symphony of the 19th century was born from diabolical passions
Published:7:00 AM11
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Symphony guide: Schubert’s Unfinished
Only two movements were completed, but Schubert’s eighth symphony stands as one of the greatest, and strangest, of the genre, writes Tom Service
Published:7:00 AM18
Symphony guide: Dvořák’s Eighth
Dvořák’s musical energy showed a way for the late 19th century symphony to be both profound and immediate in its joyful communicative power
Published:7:00 AM
Symphony guide: Webern’s op 21
In this luminous, miniature symphony, time goes backwards as well as forwards. It’s an extraordinary work, writes Tom Service
Published:9:26 AM14
Symphony guide: Haydn’s 102nd (The Miracle)
On his visits to London, Haydn discovered audiences who were eager to be surprised – and he met their expectations
Published:5:44 PM4
Symphony guide: Bruckner’s Eighth
A contemporary critic slated its ‘nightmarish hangover style’, but Bruckner’s last completed symphony contains music of sheer, breathtaking magnificence, writes Tom Service
Published:7:00 AM20
Symphony guide: Sibelius’s Sixth
Was Sibelius’s symphony of ‘pure cold water’ intended as a corrective to a musical world of modernist angst? Tom Service looks at the Finnish composer’s self-effacing, but hugely influential, work
Published:7:00 AM13
Symphony guide: Rachmaninov’s 3rd
There’s a lot more to the way Rachmaninov’s third and final symphony works than the simple attractiveness of its tunes
Published:7:00 AM13
Symphony guide: Mahler’s First
The Austrian composer’s first symphony meshed the imagination and narrative of the symphonic poem with the architectural cohesion of earlier models. His crazily ambitious project changed the genre for ever
Published:10:07 AM32
Tom Service on classical musicSymphony guide: Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia
Is there a denser, deeper, richer and stranger symphonic work? And why is it not even called a symphony? Tom Service unravels Berio’s Sinfonia
Published:7:00 AM5
Symphony guide: Schumann’s 2nd
In which Schumann reinvented his own compositional language and created an alternative way of thinking about the symphony – despite the onset of the syphilis that was eventually to kill him
Published:3:45 PM
Symphony guide: Peter Maxwell Davies’ 1st
Max’s first symphony is shot through with the presence of the sea and his isolated Orkney home. This is music that seethes and churns and shimmers and glows
Published:7:00 AM11
Tom Service on classical musicSymphony guide: Haydn’s 6th
The first of Haydn’s Esterhazy symphonies, in Le Matin nothing is taken for granted, and its musical structure is full of startling moments
Published:7:00 AM24
Symphony guide: Elgar’s 2nd
Dismiss Elgar as a purveyor of fusty romanticism at your peril. This symphony glows with a strange, veiled radiance and reveals his true colouristic genius, writes Tom Service
Published:7:00 AM40
Symphony guide: Mozart’s 38th – ‘Prague’
In the third in his symphony series, Tom Service goes back to 1786 Prague and Mozart’s 38th symphony, in which you can hear the composer straining at the limits of what his orchestra, and the form, can do.
Published:7:00 AM20
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Symphony guide: Shostakovich’s 15th
Shostakovich’s final symphony asks profound and disquieting questions and offers only ambiguities in return, writesTom Service
Published:12:39 PM20
Tom Service on classical musicSymphony guide: Beethoven’s 5th
In the first in his new series Tom Service looks at the most famous, and influential, symphonic work of them all
Published:4:14 PM76
The symphony, and how it changed our world
Next week, Tom Service begins a weekly series about the symphony, exploring through the greatest 50 how it tells the story of music and also our own place in the world
Published:6:40 PM27
Engraving of Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827) after painting by J. C. Stieler. Photograph: Time Life Pictures/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image
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