50 greatest symphonies
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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
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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
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The most innovative symphony of the 19th century was born from diabolical passions
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The word “pastoral” disguises the true intentions of Vaughan Williams’s third symphony, which confronted the horrors of the first world war
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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Symphony guide: Knussen's third symphony is only 15 minutes in length but it covers a massive musical and emotional spectrum
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Liszt's Faust Symphony blows the bogus symphonic vs programme music debate out of the water
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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
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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
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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.
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Bruckner's "saucy" sixth is the symphony that disproves those lazy received opinions about his music
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Mozart's 41st symphony - the last he composed - is full of postmodernism, palimpsests, and pure exhilaration
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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.
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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
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The 18-year-old composer's 29th symphony in A major might not have changed musical history, but it changed Tom Service's life.
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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.
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Aaron Copland's monumental symphony gave post-war America what it needed - 'the Great American Symphony'.
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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
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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
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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.
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Listen to Brahms's first symphony with fresh ears. It's a piece that took on history - and won.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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It's one of the shortest, weirdest, but most compelling symphonies of the 19th century, writes Tom Service
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'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.
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Tchaikovsky's first symphony remodelled the form into a truly Russian style, staking out territory that his five other symphonies continued to explore
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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
50 essential symphonies: what have we missed from our list?