Favorite Symphonies Quiz

@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. 

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.

Symphony No. 5: Shostakovich 

It's a power house of a symphony, at least what I can remember, as I have not played it in a long while...

@edcyn sorry, not for me. Nothing Mozart ever wrote, to me, rivaled the finale of Mahler 2. There are videos of the end nearly bringing Bernstein to tears conducting it. Not so with Mozart. Or how about Mahler 5, mvt 4 - probably the most beautiful movement of any symphony ever written. 

There's plenty of emotion in Mozart, though it's not the on-your-sleeve variety of later composers. That doesn't mean that in his formal restraint he isn't expressive. What brings one to tears may induce a yawn in another, which often tells us more about the responders than the music itself. Read what Rubinstein and Schnabel said about Mozart's music, and how so many in the early 20th century foolishly reduced him to the maker of only pretty tunes, especially when compared to the Romantic titans then so in vogue. They knew compositional genius and depth, as well as deep emotion, and weren't fooled by popular opinion.

The 40th is a miracle. But the Adagio of the Clarinet Concerto is an entire world.

The Eroica, any number of recordings. Fürtwangler's, especially; wartime for white-hot playing, as if every note is the most important thing in the world.