Although orchestras are involved in performing the full range of different types of classical music, from opera and ballet through to film and video-game soundtracks, with a good smattering of standalone classical works along the way, it is concertos and symphonies that tend to take up the largest part of most orchestras’ waking hours.
The word ‘symphony’ derives from Greek, meaning ‘a sounding together’. There have been various definitions of what exactly a symphony is over the years, but today we understand it to mean an extended work for orchestra. Very often, but not always, this consists of four movements; many consider it the purest musical form a composer can write.
Originally a term for any music played in a concert, the Italian word ‘concerto’ has now been absorbed into the English language. In modern usage, it is a musical work where music for a solo instrument is mixed and contrasted with the sound created by the rest of the orchestra.
Historians trace the introduction of the concerto back to the turn of the seventeenth century with the advent of ‘concerti ecclesiastici’ (‘church concertos’), which pitted a group of players against the rest of the orchestra. The Italian composer Arcangelo Corelli was a major force in developing this type of composition. But it was Johann Sebastian Bach who was among the first composers to create the concerto as we know it today; in his case, making the harpsichord the solo star of the show.
Mozart took the idea and ran with it, writing concertos for dozens of different instrumental groupings. As with many of the rules surrounding classical music, very few of them are hard and fast. Although concertos occur most often for solo instruments, some composers have written for larger groupings (for example Mozart’s Flute and Harp Concerto). It is usual for concertos to be written in three movements, but this is not always the case (Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 has four movements).
Here’s a list of 30 classical tracks that show off the orchestra in all of its glory. You can find them as a downloadable playlist on our website at ClassicFM.com/handyguides
Written in 1900, this work marked a return to form for the composer after a savaging at the hands of the critics for his Symphony No. 1 three years earlier. Packed full of melodies, it has regularly topped the annual Classic FM Hall of Fame poll of listeners’ favourites.
Written in the final year of the composer’s life, for his great friend, the clarinettist Anton Stadler, whose playing was described as being ‘so delicate in tone that no one who has a heart can resist it’. Cinemagoers remember it fondly for its use in the film Out of Africa.
This is the most famous of Bruch’s three violin concertos; the composer himself recognised that this work would eclipse the rest of his output. Not always the most cheery of souls, Bruch had a tempestuous relationship with the players of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, of which he was principal conductor for a brief period.
Premiered in 1921, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ inspiration for this piece was a poem by George Meredith. It’s a demanding work for the violin soloist to perform, with a melody that soars up into the very highest part of the instrument’s register, as the lark floats away across the English countryside.
Elgar was recovering from a general anaesthetic after having his tonsils out when the main tune for this piece popped into his head. It was written when he was sixty-one years old and already regarded as one of the great English composers. Many believe that the piece evokes the rolling hills of his native Worcestershire.
It wasn’t Beethoven who gave this work its nickname, but rather one of Napoleon’s officers, who was stationed in Vienna. It is said that the soldier declared it to be ‘an emperor of a concerto’. It was written at a time when Beethoven’s musical style was moving away from the sound of the Classical period, leaning towards the beginnings of the Romantic era.
As its original name implies – ‘Recollections of Life in the Country’ – this is a musical tribute to life outdoors. Each of the five movements paints a picture in sound of a particular aspect of the countryside. This style of composition, telling a specific story, became known as ‘programme music’ – and this is one of the earliest major examples of the genre.
The enigma behind these variations is one of the great mysteries of classical music. Based on a parlour game between Elgar and his wife, Alice, each of the fourteen variations refers to one of their friends. But, even after these had been decoded, a further enigma remained: what was the ‘original theme’ on which the variations are based? Elgar took the secret of it to his grave – although that hasn’t prevented virtually every musicologist ever since from offering his or her own personal view on what it might be.
No list of great orchestral works would be complete without this mighty symphonic masterpiece, which is arguably the peak of Beethoven’s musical accomplishment. It features a stirring choral setting of Friedrich Schiller’s poem ‘Ode to Joy’. It is all the more remarkable for the fact that the composer was profoundly deaf by the time the piece was premiered in 1824.
Very much a ‘one-hit wonder’ for its Baroque composer, this work really came to prominence only in the twentieth century. It remains an extremely popular choice at weddings.
This was composed originally for string quartet. Barber took the melody and turned it into a full orchestral work a couple of years after the chamber work’s debut, on the advice of the conductor Arturo Toscanini. Realising he was on to a good thing, Barber adapted it again some twenty years later, this time as a choral arrangement of the ‘Agnus Dei’.
Grieg was only twenty-five years old when he composed this, one of the greatest works for piano and orchestra. It’s hard to believe that this was actually the first piece he had written for a full orchestra, so confident and assured does the composition sound. Fans of the comedy duo Morecambe and Wise might well remember the piece being a central part of a sketch featuring conductor André Previn.
Legendary pianist virtuoso and composer Franz Liszt regarded Camille Saint-Saëns as ‘the greatest organist in the world’. Two of the four movements of this work feature the organ and the composer himself believed it to be the pinnacle of his writing. It was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society.
Vaughan Williams wrote this piece after a period studying orchestration with the French composer Maurice Ravel in Paris. Unusually, it is scored for a large string orchestra, a slightly smaller string ensemble, and a string quartet, all playing alongside each other. The main theme is by the English Elizabethan composer Thomas Tallis.
Not actually about astronomy, this work is based firmly in the world of astrology, featuring Mars, the bringer of war; Venus, the bringer of peace; Mercury, the winged messenger; Jupiter, the bringer of jollity; Saturn, the bringer of old age; Uranus, the magician; and Neptune, the mystic. It was premiered towards the end of the First World War at the Queen’s Hall in London.
The lure of a big pay cheque persuaded Dvořák to move from his native Bohemia to the USA, where he composed this symphony with its appropriate subtitle. It was premiered at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1893.
Written while he was living in Dresden, Rachmaninov’s second symphony successfully avoided the critical mauling accorded to his first adventure in the genre. In fact, audiences loved it – not least because it contains what must surely be one of the most lusciously beautiful symphonic slow movements ever written.
This is one of those pieces of core classical music that crossed over into the wider public consciousness because of a particular recording. More than two million copies of Nigel Kennedy’s performance of this Baroque favourite have been sold. If you are a Four Seasons fan, there is a whole world of Vivaldi to discover – he composed a mind-blowing 350 concertos in total, of which 230 are for the violin.
Although there are almost too many popular concertos for instruments such as the piano and violin to choose from when compiling a list such as this, it is rare to find a guitar concerto that is performed as part of the orchestra’s regular repertoire. There is no finer example of the species than Rodrigo’s seminal work, which cannot fail to conjure up images of warm Spanish sunshine on each and every listen.
The unofficial Finnish national anthem was penned by Sibelius as a pro-Finland anti-Russia work, which made him hugely popular in his homeland for its nationalistic sentiments. It also ensured that his popularity grew across Europe too – but in other countries, it was the stirring melody rather than the composer’s political viewpoint that sealed its place in every chart of the most popular classical works.
This is one of the greatest of all works for the violin, and mastering it seems to be a rite of passage for every promising young violinist, following a tradition set by the fourteen-year-old soloist Ferdinand David at the work’s premiere in 1844. The second performance was given by another fourteen-year-old, Joseph Joachim, who would go on to become one of classical music’s all-time violin greats.
He might have been twenty-nine years old when he wrote this piece, but it is worth remembering that Mozart already had twenty other piano concertos under his belt. He was the soloist in the premiere performance at the National Court Theatre in Vienna. You might sometimes hear this work referred to as the ‘Elvira Madigan’. This was because of its use in a now long-forgotten movie of the same name.
Although we think of him primarily as a composer today, it was as a conductor that Gustav Mahler was famous during his lifetime. He knew how to make orchestras sound powerful, with nearly all of his symphonies requiring a large number of players; they often last for over an hour each. His Symphony No. 5 contains five movements rather than the usual four, including the achingly beautiful Adagietto, used in the 1971 film Death in Venice.
Surely the most famous opening two bars of any work in classical music, this symphony was premiered at the same concert in Vienna as his ‘Pastoral’ Symphony No. 6. It must have been quite an occasion.
Bach’s Double Concerto for two violins was composed in 1717. A few years later, he created a new version for two harpsichords. When the original was lost, Bach scholars were able to reassemble the work based on the harpsichord transcription, so ensuring that it remains a firm favourite of the violin repertoire today.
Starting with a Russian hymn, featuring the French national anthem ‘La Marseillaise’ along the way, with booming cannon fire and celebratory bells ringing out, this unashamedly triumphant and nationalistic work is one of the great showstoppers of classical music. Great performances don’t just centre on the rousing final moments though; the best conductors perfectly contrast the delicacy of the earlier sections of the work, making the loud ending all the more effective.
One of the most accomplished orchestral composers of all time, Rimsky-Korsakov taught many others how to master the art, including Prokofiev and Stravinsky. This suite, which is based on the tale of The Thousand and One Nights, was described by the composer as a ‘kaleidoscope of fairy-tale images and designs of the oriental character’. The biggest musical hit of the four stories on which he concentrated is ‘The Young Prince and the Young Princess’.
Not as famous as his Piano Concerto No. 2, this follow-up is fiendishly difficult for the solo pianist to play. In fact, the pianist for whom it was written, one Josef Hofmann, never actually performed it, apparently saying that the work was not right for him. In the right hands though, its expansive, rather grand style makes for a magnificent listen.
Around eighty years after this work was composed, it became the world’s first million-selling album after a recording was made by the pianist Van Cliburn. All three movements contain fabulous tunes, but they weren’t initially to everybody’s taste. When the composer played the concerto to the pianist Nicolai Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky was pointedly told that it was ‘bad, trivial and vulgar’.
Given the amount of music that Beethoven composed, it seems surprising that he wrote only one concerto for the violin. Perhaps it was because it failed to gain popular approval quite as quickly as many of his other works. Things didn’t start well for the work when the soloist at the premiere hadn’t had time to learn his part and played most of it by sight – hardly what Beethoven would have wanted. There is, however, absolutely no doubt of the level of affection for the piece today.