Symphonies: Top 25

Symphonies: The Top 25

This list is devoted to the top symphonies of all time as determined by their overall ranking in Dave’s Music Database. A symphony is generally large in scale, written for an orchestra, and made up of four individual movements. Check out other best-of-genre/category lists here. Composer Name of Work (year composition was finished) 1. Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 5 (1808) 2. Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 9 (1824) 3. Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 7 (1812) 4. Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 3 in E-flat “Sinfonia Eroica” (1804) 5. Hector Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique (1830) 6. Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 6 “Pastorale” (1808) 7. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Symphony No. 40 in G minor (1788) 8. Antonin Dvorák Symphony No. 9 in E minor (“From the New World”) (1893) 9. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Symphony No. 41 “Jupiter” (1788) 10. Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 4 (1885) 11. Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 in B minor (“Pathetique”) (1893) 12. Franz Schubert Symphony No. 8 “Unfinished”) (1822) 13. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Symphony No. 38 in D major (1787) 14. Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 2 in C minor “Resurrection” (1894) 15. Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor (1902) 16. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Symphony No. 35 in D major (1782) 17. Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 8 in F major (1812) 18. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Symphony No. 39 in E flat major (1788) 19. Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 4 in B flat major (1806) 20. Franz Josef Haydn Symphony No. 104 in D major (1795) 21. Franz Schubert Symphony No. 9 in C major (1828) 22. Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 1 in D major (“Titan”) (1884-88) 23. Dmitri Shostakovich Symphony No. 5 in D minor (1937) 24. Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 9 in D major “Farewell” (1912) 25. Johannes Brahms Symphony NO. 1 in C minor (1876) Resources and Related Links: Dave’s Music Database: “Classical Works: Top 100” Dave’s Music Database: other best-of-genre lists First posted 10/3/2023.

Today in Music (1904): Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 5 premiered.

Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor Gustav Mahler

Premiered: October 18, 1904 Composed: 1901-02 Peak: -- Sales (in millions): -- Genre: classical > symphony

Movements/Parts: Trauermarsch (Funeral march) Stürmisch bewegt, mit größter Vehemenz (Moving stormily, with the greatest vehemence) Scherzo. Kräftig, nicht zu schnell(Strong and not too fast) D major Adagietto. Sehr langsam (Very slow) F major Rondo-Finale. Allegro – Allegro giocoso. Frisch(Fresh) D major Average Duration: 75:00

Rating: 3.919 out of 5.00 (average of 3 ratings) Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Work: Gustav Mahler “emerged as a crucial bridge between the musical Romanticism of the 19th century and the modernism of the 20th, a composer who simultaneously summed up the achievements of his predecessors and pointed the way forward.” LP His fifth symphony was composed during the summers of 1901 and 1902, “during his annual holiday from his job as director of the Vienna Court Opera.” LP It was his first purely instrumental symphony since his first symphony. LP He composed it The symphony, “with its trajectory from mourning to triumph,” LP reflects Mahler’s relationship with Alma Schindler, “the beautiful daughter of a famous landscape painter.” LP He met her in Vienna the winter before he started writing the symphony and proposed to her in the fall of 1901. They were married and expecting their first child by the summer of 1902. WK The First Movement: The symphony “opens with a funeral march that starts with a trumpet fanfare whose rhythm dominates the movement. The march contrasts with two trio sections, the first bursting out of the near-silence like some sort of terrifying, demonic carnival music, the second a more somber, restrained passage for the strings.” LP The Second Movement: “The second movement builds on the material of that demonic first trio of the opening march. This is intense, raw music, with Mahler whipping up a frenzy from comparatively modest material. The only respite comes with the appearance of a D-major chorale, a joyous, hymn-like passage that finds the sun temporarily piercing the charged gray hues of the surrounding storm clouds.” LP The Third Movement: The third movement is the longest. “The mood abruptly shifts from the pessimism and storminess of the first two movements to a lighter, affirmative disposition, aided by the dance rhythms.” WK Mahler “balances the tone of folksy Austrian country dances and the more cultivated elegance of the Viennese waltz.” LP The “shadowy writing for the orchestra, has much in common with the ‘night music’ movements of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony.” LP The Fourth Movement: The fourth movement, “Adagietto,” was Mahler’s “declaration of love to Alma" LP and maybe Mahler’s greatest hit.” LP It “has often been performed as a stand-alone piece.” LP Leonard Bernstein conducted a performance of it on June 8 1968, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan for the funeral Mass for Robert F. Kennedy. WK The Fifth Movement: “Several of the themes evolve out of the fragments heard in the opening measures. The last movement also utilizes themes from the Adagietto as well as the chorale from the second movement.” WK

Resources and Related Links: LP LAPhil.com “Symphony No. 5: Gustav Mahler” by John Mangum WK Wikipedia Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 10/5/2023.

 

Today in Music (1895): Mahler’s Symphony No 2 premiered

Symphony No. 2 in C minor (Resurrection) Gustav Mahler

Composed: 1888-1894 First Performed: December 13, 1895 Peak: -- Sales (in millions): -- Genre: classical > symphony

Parts/Movements: Allegro maestoso Andante moderato In ruhig fließender Bewegung (With quietly flowing movement) “Urlicht” (Primal light) Im Tempo des Scherzos (In the tempo of the scherzo) Average Duration: 80 to 90 minutes

Rating: 3.909 out of 5.00 (average of 3 ratings) Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Work: Gustav Mahler’s second symphony, referred to as the Resurrection Symphony, was one of the composer’s “most popular and successful works during his lifetime. A 2016 poll from BBC Music Magazine named it the fifth greatest symphony of all time. It was his first major work that established his lifelong view of the beauty of afterlife and resurrection.” WK Mahler posed questions such as, “Why have you lived? Why have you suffered? Is it all some huge, awful joke? We have to answer these questions somehow if we are to go on living – indeed, even if we are only to go on dying!” LA He said these were questions posed in the first movement which would be answered in the finale. LA In 1888, Mahler began writing a symphonic poem called “Totenfeier (Funeral Rites)” which would become the first movement of the symphony. He said it represented the funeral of the hero from his first symphony, “whose death presented those superheated existential questions.” LA That same year, he started sketching out the second movement as well. He said it “sounds completely incongruous after the first” but that “it isn’t lack of understanding on the part of the audience…The Andante is composed as a sort of intermezzo (like an echo of long past days from the life of him whom we carried to the grave in the first movement.” LA It wasn’t until 1893, however, that he composed the second and third movements. WK The third movement is essentially a symphonic adaptation of “St. Anthony of Padua’s Sermon to the Fishes,” a song Mahler wrote based on a collection of German folk poetry called Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn). LA He struggled with the finale because he knew it would be compared to Beethoven’s ninth symphony since both “use a chorus as the centerpiece of a final movement which begins with references to and is much longer than those preceding it.” WK The composition was completed in 1894 after Mahler received inspiration from the funeral of Hans von Bülow, a fellow conductor at the Hamburg Opera. Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s poem “Die Auferstehung (The Resurrection)” was performed and, as Mahler said, “It struck me like lightning…and everything was revealed to me clear and pain.” WK He incorporated the first two verses of the hym into his work. In March of 1895, Mahler conducted the first three movements with the Berlin Philharmonic. Then in December he led that orchestra in a premiere of the full work. LA

Resources and Related Links: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Gustav Mahler LA LAphil.com “Symphony No. 2, ‘Resurrection’” WK Wikipedia First posted 12/7/2023.

Today in Music (1893): Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 first performed

Symphony No. 6 in B minor (Pathétique) Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky (composer)

Composed: February – August 1893 First performed: October 28, 1893 Peak: -- Sales (in millions): -- Genre: classical > symphony

Parts/Movements: Adagio – Allegro non troppo Allegro con grazia Allegro molto vivace Finale, Adagio lamentoso Average Duration: 45:20

Rating: 4.662 out of 5.00 (average of 5 ratings) Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: In 1890, Tchaikovsky wrote to Nadezhda von Meck, his patroness of thirteen years, about a possible “program symphony.” AM Three years later, he composed this, his sixth symphony, between February and August. He dedicated the work to Vladimir Davidov, his nephew, who was prominent in many of Tchaikovsky’s letters and diary entries in the 1880s. AM The work’s subtitle, “Pathétique,” translates not to “pathetic” as one might assume, but “deeply affecting the emotions.” TM It’s “an excellent description,” TM considering how Tchaikovsky “gets tangled up in tones of overwhelming sorrow, and then leaps into the swollen, outsized drama that was a trademark of his ballets. Where Beethoven’s dark moments hold an undercurrent of hope and faith in humanity, Tchaikovsky lets the despair just be despair.” TM “During the work’s incubation Tchaikovsky was in rare good spirits, pleased with his boldness and fluency, especially in the trailblazing finale, a drawn-out Adagio of funereal character. Where others still wrote conventional slow movements, he hit on the idea of ‘a limping waltz’ in 5/4 time. And he made the scherzo a march that builds to such a pitch of excitement that audiences ever since, everywhere, applaud at the end.” AM “A lugubrious Adagio prologue begins with a bassoon solo in E minor that makes its way upward through the murk of divisi string basses, followed by a nervous little motif that blossoms into the main theme of an Allegro ma non troppo sonata-structure in B minor. The memorably sighing, mauve-hued melody that dominates this movement is actually its secondary subject. A crashing orchestral tutti sets up the passionately agitated development section, followed by a condensed reprise and a brief, calmed coda.” AM “Tchaikovsky’s marking for this D major ‘waltz’ movement is Allegro con grazia – a song and trio with extended coda whose mood may be wistful, even melancholic midway, but whose spirit is balletic, to the extent of echoing Nutcracker’s ‘Waltz of the Flowers,’ composed a year earlier.” AM “The March-Scherzo, Allegro molto vivace in common time, has an elfin character at the start. It is a sonatina (exposition and reprise without development) that quick-steps to an explosive climax but always returns to tonic G major.” AM “Another sonatina (symphonic developments were Tchaikovsky's bête noire) is anchored in B minor, although the tragic second theme enters in D major. The overall mood is inconsolably grieving, but not ‘pathetic.’ Ultimately, the music returns to those murky depths in which the symphony was born some 40 minutes earlier — without, however, benediction or hope.” AM

Reviews: AM AllMusic.com review by Roger Dettmer TM Tom Moon (2008). 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. Workman Publishing Company, Inc.: New York, NY. Pages 768-9. Related DMDB Links: First posted 5/8/2011; last updated 2/27/2026.

Today in Music (1893): Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9

Symphony No. 9 in E minor (From the New World) Antonin Dvořák (composer)

Composed: 1/10/1893 – 5/24/1893 First Performed: December 16, 1893 Peak: -- Sales (in millions): -- Genre: classical > symphony

Parts/Movements: Adagio…Allegro molto Largo Molto vivace…Poco sostenuto Allegro con fuoco Average Duration: 40:00

Rating: 4.596 out of 5.00 (average of 9 ratings) Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Work: Dvorák subtitled his ninth symphony “From the New World,” honoring the years he lived in New York City and established a music school. He “absorbed essential bits of the character of New York, and by extension America: Underpinning his themes is a deep restlessness, a sense of unresolved striving.” TM “Like other European musicians, he found himself enchanted. But he was also homesick, and that contradiction drives the piece. This dizzying, craftily integrated celebration of spirituals, Native American folk songs, and other ethnographic elements was together by someone who couldn’t wait to get back to the old country.” TM “Chauvinists among us still claim that its themes are either Amerindian or African-American, which Dvorák refuted in 1900: ‘Omit the nonsense about my having made use of ‘American’ motifs...I tried only to write in the spirit of those national melodies.’” AM “This dust-up managed to ignore influences both stronger and more subtle. Dvorák already knew Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, completed in 1888, and he likewise used a motto-theme to link the four movements in his symphony in E minor. The introduction can be made to sound a lot more Tchaikovskian, indeed, than a subsequent theme can be made to sound like ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,’ as alleged.” AM “Beyond the Slavic gravitas of both symphonies, however, Dvorák’s musical signature was intrinsically Czech, even in the Largo movement that represented, he once said, Hiawatha at the grave site of Minnehaha (a quasi-Spiritual, ‘Goin’ Home’ text was created post facto by a white American pupil). By the time he heard any Amerind music, during the summer of 1893 near a Czech settlement at Spillville, Iowa, Dvorák had finished the Ninth Symphony. From the structural standpoint, two sonata-form movements (with an exposition repeat in the first) bracket two movements in song form (ABA), all of them with brief introductions and codas.” AM Adagio: “The 2/4 Allegro molto has an Adagio preface in 4/8 time. Horns introduce the motto theme, answered by clarinets and bassoons, then strings. Flutes and oboes play a melody in G minor before the ‘Swing Low’ closing subject shifts from minor to G major. Sectional development omits the G minor tune; reprise and coda are distillations.” AM Largo: “The ‘Largo’ begins in D flat major, far from single sharped E minor. A plaintive English horn melody dominates both here and later on. In between a C sharp minor section marked Un poco più mosso, winds introduce two themes, more palpitant than the D flat section’s big tune, before the motto makes a sinister appearance.” AM Dvorák “grapples with the earthy, deeply rooted tones of African American spirituals.” TM Molto Vivace: “Song sections marked Scherzo: Molto vivace, in E minor, pay homage less to Indian pow-wows than to the scherzo movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. A briefer subject in E major recalls the G major closing theme of the first movement, followed by the motto. The Poco sostenuto Trio is pure Czech, beginning in C major, with a G major second theme related to the Beethoven rhythm in sections A and A.” AM Allegro con Fuoco: “Allegro con fuoco is the marking of the final movement with a martial main theme in E minor for horns and trumpets. The clarinet counters with a nostalgic sub-theme, after which flutes and fiddles play a closing subject in G major. The development combines music from previous movements with the main theme of movement 4. Following the recap, a Grand Coda ends with a fortissimo restatement of the motto, then a diminuendo to pianissimo on the final chord.” AM Dvorák “expects the ensemble to summon an overgrown American exuberance, and anything less can cast ugly shadows on the subtle music that’s come before.” TM

Reviews: AM AllMusic.com review by Roger Dettmer TM Tom Moon (2008). 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. Workman Publishing Company, Inc.: New York, NY. Pages 242-3. Related DMDB Links: First posted 4/2/2008; last updated 2/27/2026.

Today in Music (1788): Mozart completed Symphony No. 40

Symphony No. 40 in G minor (Great), K. 550 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (composer)

Composed: 1788 First Performed: July 25, 1788 Peak: -- Sales (in millions): -- Genre: classical > symphony

Parts/Movements: Molto allegro Andante Meuetto & Trio, Allegretto Allegro assai Average Duration: 26:40

Rating: 4.761 out of 5.00 (average of 5 ratings) Quotable: “One of the greatest works of a composer whose music so frequently defies adequate description” – Brian Robins, AllMusic.com Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Work: In the summer of 1788, Mozart composed his final three symphonies (39-41). These “are high points in the history of music.” TM He “is extremely attentive to form. The basic outline of a symphonic work hadn’t been codified all that long when Mozart began, and most of the late Mozart symphonies follow the accepted blueprint.” TM Still, “they’re notable for their wildly exuberant dances, their floral colors, and the way Mozart links seemingly disconnected four-to-six-note motifs into larger thematic groups.” TM Symphony No. 40, sometimes referred to as the “Great” symphony, “displays a thicker sense of orchestration and stormier, tempestuous proto-Beethoven moods; some believe this hints at the type of music Mozart might have made had he lived longer.” TM Some have argued that “Mozart had no specific occasion in mind for their performance” AM and that he simply wrote them for posterity. WK However, “scholar H. C. Robbins Landon has…[argued they were] written for a series of concerts…in the fall or Advent season of 1788.” AM Neal Zaslaw has offered evidence that “Mozart took the three symphonies on the tour he made to Germany the following year.” AM There is also other evidence of performances of the symphony from 1789 to 1791. WK “One aspect of the symphonies upon which commentators reach universal agreement is their extraordinary diversity of character; each has unique qualities which together utterly explode the myth that the extreme agitation and pathos of the G minor Symphony reflected the abject circumstances in which Mozart found himself at this period…Neither should it be forgotten that the tragic qualities so often associated with the symphony today have not always been apparent to all. To Robert Schumann the symphony was a work of ‘Grecian lightness and grace,’ while for a later writer, Alfred Einstein, there are passages that ‘plunge to the abyss of the soul.’” AM “The symphony is cast in the usual four movements; the opening Molto allegro immediately announces something unusual by starting not with characteristic loud ‘call to attention,’ but with quietly spoken agitation. The uneasy passion of the main theme leads to conclusions that seem to protest rather than find any consolation. The movement’s dominant feeling is urgency: upbeat after upbeat after upbeat occurs. Amid great instability and a questioning aura, we experience a peek into Don Giovanni’s abyss. In the finale, the horns intrude with wild swatches of color. There is even an eerie twelve-note insertion after the double bar in the Allegro assai section.” AM “There are two versions of the G minor symphony. The first is modestly scored for flute and pairs of oboes, horns, and strings, but at some point shortly after composition Mozart added parts for two clarinets, slightly altering the oboe parts to accommodate them. Such second thoughts surely also add credibility to the idea that Mozart led performances of the work – he would hardly have bothered with such refinements if the symphony was not being used for practical purposes.” AM

Reviews: AM AllMusic.com review by Brian Robins TM Tom Moon (2008). 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. Workman Publishing Company, Inc.: New York, NY. Pages 529-30. WK Wikipedia Related DMDB Links: Last updated 2/27/2026.

Today in Music (1885): Brahms' Symphony No. 4 premiered

Symphony No. 4 in E Minor Johannes Brahms (composer)

Composed: 1884-85 First Performed: October 25, 1885 Peak: -- Sales (in millions): -- Genre: classical > symphony

Parts/Movements: Allegro non troppo Andante moderato Allegro giocoso Allegro energico e passionato Average Duration: 40:30

Rating: 4.562 out of 5.00 (average of 6 ratings) Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Work: “The symphonies of Johannes Brahms are built on granite foundations – solid musical ideas that can initially seem less than sexy. Where Beethoven seeks to push limits of harmony, phrase, length, and rhythm, Brahms…establishes a comfortable basic perimeter, and lever lets the heavy machinery venture outside of it. His four pieces for orchestra represent a scholarly consolidation of everything he knew; he didn’t begin writing symphonies until after he turned forty,” TM completing his first one at age 43. “The composer’s output to that point suggests a conscious process of self-education. A number of smaller-scale orchestral works, including the Variations on a Theme of Haydn and the proto-symphonic Piano Concerto No. 1, suggest preparation for what Brahms clearly saw as the elusive of compositional enterprises. He was to meet the challenge with a skill and individual spirit, one of Classicism refracted through the prism of high romanticism, that led many to pronounce him heir to Beethoven.” AM The First Movement: “Each of the movements bears the distinct stamp of the composer’s personality. The first begins with a theme in E minor based upon the interval of a third, which also provides a structural and motivic foundation for the remainder of the work. There is a notable sense of unrest from beginning to end, and the tragic, even fatalistic atmosphere is further and stunningly underlined by the final, minor-key plagal (IV-I) cadence.” AM The Second Movement: “The second movement, which opens with a brief, melancholy sort of fanfare, gives way to the quietly accompanied winds in perhaps one of the loveliest of any of the composer’s themes, granted particular plangency through the use of the flat sixth and seventh scale degrees borrowed from the minor mode. This material is gradually developed into soaring, tutti lyricism that fades into ethereal quiet.” AM The Third Movement: “The third movement, a lusty, stomping, duple dance, proved so popular in Brahms’ lifetime that audiences constantly demanded that it be repeated.” AM The Fourth Movement: The last movement is perhaps most notable of all, cast as it is in the ‘archaic’ Baroque form of a chaconne — variations over a ground bass. The chaconne’s subject is in fact a slight modification of that used by Bach in his Cantata No. 150; though deceptively simple — essentially an ascending minor scale segment from the tonic note to the dominant, then a leap back to the tonic — Brahms uses this skeleton as the basis for an increasingly elaborate and thematic harmonic framework. From its first presentation, which is not as a bass line, but as a theme in the winds, Brahms gradually weaves some 34 variations that steadily build in intensity, as though in defiance to the oppressive, insistent rotation of the ground. The final variations lead directly into an ending which reconfirms the weight of tragedy and pathos borne by the first movement.” AM The finale “is like a dying man’s flashback dream, with scenes of tragedy and joy bursting forth and then receding over a recurring pattern of eight chords. Brahms treats each event as a discrete scene, supporting them with slight changes of color, piling world upon world in a way that makes the mood swings consistently surprising.” TM

Reviews: AM AllMusic.com review by Michael Rodman TM Tom Moon (2008). 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. Workman Publishing Company, Inc.: New York, NY. Page 112. Related DMDB Links: Last updated 2/27/2026.