This is satire-proof:
1 Mozart symphony #41
2 Florence Price symphony #1
3 Beethoven symphony #9
4 Mahler symphony #2…
Critical listening, or top-down propaganda?
View here.
The conductor was asked a direct question by…
The pianist has issued the following advisory to…
From my latest essay in The Critic: Days…
The cellist has let rip in an interview…
Session expired
Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page.
LOL. ok. I mean it’s a fine symphony, nothing wrong with it. But number 2 all time? Nah
Wait, this is 2 lol. Has anyone ever heard it?
It’s another NL typo; they listed Symphony No. 1. If it had been No. 2, then it wouldn’t be satire-proof.
Satire:
Symphony (1) in e “Wanamaker” (1932)
Symphony (3) in c “WPA” (1940)
Symphony (4) in d “St Anne” (1945)
She withdrew No. 2.
Ridiculous. She is a third-rate composer, at best.
Must take a discerning ear to enjoy a piece that’s lost and has never been performed.
Any such list is going to be flawed and elicit strong criticism. But this list is particularly stupid and woke. I like Florence Price and very much enjoyed performing her 3rd Symphony, which is better than the 1st, but to list any of her works in the top 10 is patently ridiculous. Greater than Dvorak 7, 8, or 9, Mozart 39 or 40, Beethoven Pastoral or Mahler 9, just to name a few. And Shosty 5 is not the equal of 4 or 10. Just another attempt by some silly people to virtue signal.
Mentioning Dvorak is particularly funny considering her music sounds a great deal like his.
Yes, her music is tuneful and pleasant; if that is the standard for “best,” I’m sure Max Richter will rocket to the top of the charts soon enough.
Agreed. Her music sounds like the first draft Dvorak threw out.
So why don’t we all share our own Top 10 best pics. Mine are (in no particular order):
Beethoven 6
Beethoven 7
Beethoven 9
Brahms 3
Bruckner 9
Bruckner 5
Schubert 8
Sibelius 2
Schumann 2
Tchaikovsky 6
Honorable mentions:
Dvorak 8
Brahms 1
Bruckner 8
Bruckner 7
Bruckner 2
Schumann 3
Tchaikovsky 5
Shostakovich 10
Shostakovich 4
Suk, A Summer’s Tale (a symphony in all but name)
Vaughan Williams 3 (“Pastoral”)
Segerstam 314 (ok, just kidding)
LOVED that you have my favorite Brahms symphony in your list!
Ok, here goes mine:
1. Beethoven 9
2. Brahms 3
3. Tchaikovsky 6
4. Prokofiev 5
5. Vaughn Williams 4
6. Hindemith Mathis der Maler
7. Haydn almost any (if pressured I’ll just throw out a random #)
8. Mahler 5
9. Bruckner 8
10. Brahms 4
Honorable mentions
Beethoven 1, 4, 6, & 7
Brahms 1 & 2
Tchaikovsky 4
Shostakovich 5 & 10
Sibelius 5
Mozart 41
Bruckner 4
Mahler 1
Schubert 9
An enjoyable list though I care little for Brahms nor Tchaikovsky. My list:
Beethoven 3 & 9
Bruckner 8
Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique
Ives 2
Mahler 5
Mozart 39
Shostakovich 5
Prokofiev 5
Vaughan Williams 1
If anyone else lists Ives 2 I’d be shocked – but it is a fine piece.
No Tchaik or Brahms? I’d rather not live in that universe LOL
The Ives 2 makes sense since the origin of this thread was to discuss the merits of a twentieth-century American symphony by Price. I can think of a couple of dozen twentieth-century American symphonies that are better than any by Price, but I would put the Ives #2 at the top of the list. I have listened to the Price/Seguin stream but it’s just warmed over Dvorak.
As to Brahms and Tchiakovsky, I didn’t say ‘no’ to them, I just didn’t have them on my short list. I almost put Tchaikovsky #1 on my list – there is a wonderful live recording under Chailly in one of thje RCO box sets. I have recordings of all six symphonies but really only ever listen to #1 and #4.
I know, Brahms symphonies are a blind spot for me. I have tried over the years (recordings conducted ny Toscanini, Furtwangler, Wand, Gardiner and others) but I just never listen to any of them anymore. I listen to the sextets and quintets (but only not the quartets) but that is about it for my Brahms universe.
1. Beethoven 7
2. Beethoven 9
3. Mozart 40
4. Bruckner 9
5. Bruckner 7
6. Mahler 5
7. Shostakovich 5
8. Shostakovich 10
9. Sibelius 5
10. Sibelius 7
11. Nielsen 4
12. Schubert 8
13. Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique
14. Dvorak 9
15. Tchaikovsky 6
. . . because it’s both pointless and meaningless.
In my current mood, in this order but the order is not set in stone …
Sibelius 7
Eroica
Mahler 7
Elgar 1
Bruckner 7
Mozart 39
Brahms 4
Sibelius 2
Beethoven 7
Mahler 9
The sheerest nonsense
This has nothing to do with the merits of Florence Price’s music (fine but hardly top 25) and everything to do with the merits of Classic-FM. Consider the source.
Yeah, and throwing Farrenc in there as they do makes the whole thing completely inane.
It depends what their criteria is when it comes to “best.” I agree with this ranking if it means symphonies that are important cultural touchstones.
The most well-crafted or pleasurable to the ear? That’s a more subjective call. But Price certainly represents a vital part of the symphonic legacy of the 20th century.
No, it doesn’t. At all. Florence Price did nothing to advance the art and a great deal currently to throw advancement in reverse: calling her symphony a work of great artistry is simply incorrect and fawning over ever BIPOC creation isn’t going to help the truly great artists be any more recognizable.
Great black artists? Try Coltrane, Parker, or Davis first – their music is art music in every sense and deservedly regarded as such. Too bad they didn’t write a symphony so they could possibly receive inclusion on this list.
She absolutely does not represent a vital part of symphonic legacy. Cultural touchstones? How do you mesh that into great symphonies? I would think an important cultural touchstone would have been heard by many, for starters. Price has only been widely performed in the past decade, and mostly in America.
Sure, she does. Until the Chicago Symphony introduced her first symphony in 1935, no Black woman had ever had a work played by a major orchestra. Not for an oversight but because they were intentionally shut out. The old, white men who dominate this comments forum fail to understand what powerful a cultural moment this was.
Plus, it’s great music. I would much rather pay money to hear a Price symphony today than a thousandth hearing of a Brahms or Tchaikovsky symphony.
“Plus, it’s great music. I would much rather pay money to hear a Price symphony today than a thousandth hearing of a Brahms or Tchaikovsky symphony.”
I wouldn’t. But I would pay to hear this over modern atonal crap.
“The old, white men who dominate this comments forum fail to understand what powerful a cultural moment this was.”
I don’t think people are denying that. But let’s not let that clout the judgement of the actual product, which I think so many do.
“…what powerful a cultural moment this was.”
Yeah, right. It made such a profound impact!
Great music? What a joke. She is a third-rate composer.
You’re being generous
At least she had a go, even if it’s a pile of crap.
Consider the source by all means, and the current situation, but also, the Florence Price symphonies come from and resemble an era of symphonies, many of them good ones (and perhaps better than hers), that have been downplayed or ignored perhaps because of a general feeling that the symphony as a form was old and out of date and to write one showed that its composer was out of the loop.
People actually like music that sounds like that.
Price is getting exposure due to perfectly valid reasons. The Glazunov, Rimsky Korsakov, John Knowles Paine, Charles Tournemire, and similar symphonies are on the outside looking it but people would like them too.
A ridiculous reply to an unanswerable question.
Why stop at #2? Why not the Greatest of All Time? This blatant prostration at the Church of Black is Great and Good has shown itself to be so devoid of any basis of fact or knowledge or experience that it again exposes how ludicrous n empty the movement is.
I don’t listen to Classic FM as it’s bad for my classical music health, so this ridiculous list means nothing to me. Given that most, if not all, of Classic FMs presenters probably know next to nothing about classical music it can hardly be taken seriously. As for Florence Price’s work, it was probably voted for by wokist listeners. Fair play if it’s a good piece but I cannot see how it’s deemed better than Mahler 2, or any other Symphony in the established repertoire by male composers that could be mentioned.
Top 12 Symphonies (not 15) that I return to over and over again:
Mahler 9
Beethoven 7
Brahms 2
Brahms 3
Brahms 4
Beethoven 9
Mahler 4
Shostakovich 10
Beethoven 6
Dvorak 8
Schubert 9
Sibelius 5
Aimez-vous Brahms? Brahms 2 is the composer’s red-headed stepchild, a lacuna in most people’s listening experience of his symphonies, mine included.
Er, Haydn?
Stalin would be jealous of the propaganda machine Price has got going for her. This is…beyond satire. You had better laugh, because otherwise you’ll cry.
Stupid, woke, and completely unprofessional. Welcome to our time
Please define “woke.”
“This week in cultural abasement -“
No Bruckner 4 or 7? No credibility!
This is very simply yet again a list that needs to be provocative because no one will care about a list that puts Beethoven’s 9th at number 1, Mozart’s 40th at No. 2, Beethoven’s 5th at number 3, a Mahler at number 4, and a Brahms at number 5.
It’s no different from when the ‘best whisky in the world’ was a Canadian rye, or when Rolling Stone Magazine literally got protests for excluding Celine Dion from their list of the 200 greatest singers.
And, proof of concept, it’s getting traffic.
I was looking for this comment, and surprised how many indignant and disdainful comments I had to scroll through to find it. The Classic FM list doesn’t make any pretence of serious musical criticism (which has no interest in ‘the top XX of all time’). These are just, they’re suggesting, ‘the biggest, most emotional, most impressive and plain-old flabbergasting works’. A mildly mischievous little pop at the musical canon. To provoke indignation and amusement (depending on your temperament) and strings of alternative top 15s. And perhaps to introduce readers to unfamiliar works (I think I’m pretty ‘well-listened’, but there are a few here I don’t know). No value to the list, and no harm.
And the Greatest Orchestra Award goes to …
*drum roll*
.. Portsmouth Sinfonia
Yes, their assault on “The Nutcracker” has to be heard to be believed … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asYwFnm6X7I
But it took first prize in [checks notes] “a competition!!!”
I realize that a lot of fans of classical music become apprehensive around a John Williams (too popular and middle-brow!), but I’m sure if he were a she instead of a he, and non-white instead of white, he’d be touted as the 2nd coming of history’s greatest composers.
Some of the critics and writers involved in culture in 2023 are doing to music what Meghan Markle is doing (and has done) to the royal family.
“Alex, I’ll take tokenism for $100…”
This article in Classic FM doesn’t even have a writer byline. Classic FM is a commercial radio station and not a serious publication.
Of course it’s absurd. But Gorecki 3 in #8? That’s nearly as absurd; why is nobody objecting to THAT? And I love Mahler 2 but #9 is his greatest.
Anyone with half a brain knows that these types of lists are published all the time, and rely on the boredom of the readers to give it attention. Her work is on people’s minds due to it being February, ergo the short attention span of people puts her in the forefront of people’s minds. Add in the guaranteed whining/attention from the, “Waah, woke-ism, I’m not racist, but…” crowd, and ta-da, new place on an “all time” list that changes all the time.
I question the need to jump in the attention-desperate bandwagon of “reporting” on this, especially knowing the sort of attention it would attract. Was it really necessary?
As of this writing, the top-ranked new classical releases on US Amazon are by Pink and The Strokes. Whitney Houston is at #5 and #8, with Jessye Norman and William Byrd in between.
What does this mean? It means that the ranker has a silly method. The linked webpage doesn’t clarify Classic FM’s method, though there’s a suggestion of ‘vote early and often.’
They also more or less equated Lang Lang to Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, and Rachmaninov in a similar chart for pianists.
Having purchased the Yannick Nézet-Séguin recording, I can see why Classic FM listeners would enjoy the symphony. It is fill of fine melodies reminiscent of Dvořák’s “From the New World” symphony. That doesn’t make it the second greatest of course.
However, it does open a debate about what Florence Price might have achieved if she hadn’e been born black and a woman bearing in mind the era in which she lived.
As they say in exams, discuss.
(As I understand it, her second symphony has been lost, but her fourth has been recorded. Her thir is the coupling with the first on Nézet-Séguin’s recording of the first on DG.)
Amazing! Six lists of the best symphonies and not one mention of Beethoven 5, arguably the greatest of all.
Mahler? Florence Price? If I had a dog, he could draw up a better list.
I truly do not get the point issuing these types of things. No one believes it. I don’t think anyone even believes that the authors of these things believe them. It’s baffling to me.
Why couldn’t the list simply been 15 symphonies worth listening to? Then they can put in any symphony they like.
How can this site have any credibility with such a ridiculous list? I can think of a dozen symphonies that are better than some of the symphonies on this list.