What’s Your Favourite Symphony?

[richardfinegold]

I'm not going to waste the time, S_A: which was my favourite breath makes as much sense to me.

I’m with you, and daily events have a lot to do with it. We are in the midst of a week long snowstorm. Schumann’s Spring sounds pretty hopeful but RVW Antarctica probably more cathartic...

[Pabmusic]

Today ......

RVW : A Sea Symphony ( first Boult recording )

Tomorrow ......

Stunning recording still.

I know it's pedantry, but I have to point out that RVW simply didn't consider the Sea Symphony to be ... a 'symphony'. At the time he explained that he'd called it a 'symphony' because he'd treated the text, not the music, 'symphonically'. Then a couple of years later when George Butterworth said, "You know - you ought to write a symphony", RVW replied that "I had never written one and had no intention of doing so". But Butterworth persisted and we have the London. It's also clear from their correspondence that neither thought the London was anything other than RVW's first.

It was circumstances that made RVW number his symphonies - OUP insisted on a number for the new symphony in 1956 - it was just getting too confusing. Decca had already recorded 7 'symphonies' so RVW opted for 'no. 8'.

I'll get my anorak...

[Simon B]

Mahler 3. Live. No recording will do.

[teamsaint]

I'm not going to waste the time, S_A: which was my favourite breath makes as much sense to me.

And in any case you have yer modding to be getting on with.......

( sense ?......)

[Suffolkcoastal]

Easy one for me RVW: Symphony no 5, has been for 30 years & I expect it will be for the next 30 (if I last that long).

[Pabmusic]

Well, I thought a lot about this, and I've come to a conclusion - I can't answer the question.

So I shan't.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Bah humbug!

[EdgeleyRob]

Easy

RVW 9 (Ideally Boult LPO 1958)

[Serial_Apologist]

Beef Oven's favourite mint phony!

[Bella Kemp]

Mahler 3 - everything is there: the very depths of sorrow and yet also profound joy and all points in between. I never tire of this work, for me it is the crowning achievement of Western civilization.

[Keraulophone]

Chausson in B flat Op 20.

[Alain Maréchal]

Franck, and not just because of... it really is.
But if its hors concours then Nielsen 3.

[Bella Kemp]

I won't change from my choice of Mahler 3, but the great thing about this thread is that it compels one to listen afresh to familiar works and to listen -perhaps shamefully for the first time - to those symphonies one has somehow missed: Martinu 4 I'm looking at you.

[gradus]

Since you ask...Eroica.

[Alain Maréchal]

Martinu 4 I'm looking at you.

Warning: there is an excellent chance that at some point during the finale you may start jumping around the room.