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Favorite Symphonies Quiz

Pick your favorite composer for each symphony. You can’t use a composer more than once.

Here are my answers (at least today’s answers):
Symphony No. 1: Copland
Symphony No. 2: Hanson
Symphony No. 3: Saint-Saëns
Symphony No. 4: Bruckner
Symphony No. 5: Shostakovich
Symphony No. 6: Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 7: Sibelius
Symphony No. 8: Mahler
Symphony No. 9: Beethoven

What are your picks? I’m looking forward to learning something.
128x128phomchick
phomchick's avatar
phomchick OP
209 posts
 
“Very hard to compose a list given this limitation.  Had to repeat. Leaves a good many great symphonies out. Not really fair.”

If you are unhappy about leaving composers out, why did you repeat?
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
5,314 posts
 
Good, Hovhaness, anyone else?

Another way to think about Mahler is which ones could you possibly do without.  For me that would be 8, then 7, then 1.  And that would be it.

@mayoradamwest I can't do without the lovely last movement of the 4th.
My favorite is Felicity Lott with Franz Welzer-Most, which isn't particularly well known.
rvpiano's avatar
rvpiano
2,653 posts
 
Phomchick,

I don’t quite understand your question.
Unless I’m wrong, you wanted to know who wrote the best 1st symphony, best second symphony, etc.
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mayoradamwest
429 posts
 
@twoleftears that’s fair about 4. I do like it. But I also love Tchaikovsky 4. The whole thing is a bit contrived. Mahler makes it unfair for works like Sibelius 2, Rachmaninov 2, Brahms 1, Shostakovich 5 (and 7), etc. and then of course why stop with numbers? How about Strauss’ tone poems like Alpine Symphony and and Ein Heldenlaben. 
edcyn
1,876 posts
 
mayoradamwest -- Duel!  Draw batons!  Mozart sums up the entire universe in his late symphonies, the ones from 29 onwards.  Grace, humanity & transcendent loveliness.  The earlier ones may not all be quite as transcendent but they make up for it in spirit and fun.  To me Mozart's music is like being with the most beautiful woman you've ever seen...a woman that knows how to party, too.
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