Saint-Saëns’ Symphony no.3 in C Minor was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society of London and was first performed there on 19th May 1886 with the composer conducting. The work was dedicated to the memory of Saint-Saëns’ friend Franz Liszt who died that year. It is popularly known as the ‘Organ Symphony’ even though it … Read more
Beethoven was already an established pianist when he moved to Vienna in 1792 to study under Haydn and he soon established a reputation as a piano virtuoso and improviser in the salons of the nobility. Recognizing the genius and potential of his pupil, Haydn requested that Beethoven publicly call himself “student of Haydn”. The relationship … Read more
Franz Joseph Haydn, was born in 1732, in Rohrau, on the Austrian-Hungarian border. At the age of five, he was sent to Vienna to live with a cruel uncle, where in between floggings he learnt the violin, clavier and kettledrum. Three years later, he became a chorister in St Stephen’s Cathedral Vienna. He stayed here … Read more
Vaughan Williams, the fiftieth anniversary of whose death is being marked this year, and his music, life and personality widely celebrated, did not number his symphonies, but the London Symphony was his second, premièred in March 1914. The only copy of the score was sent to a publisher in Germany just as World War I … Read more
Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No 2 in D Major was started in 1900 in Italy and finished in 1902 in Finland. It was first performed in Finland in that year with the composer conducting. The Symphony was an immediate success and established Sibelius as a major composer. Its reception outside of Finland was less enthusiastic, and … Read more
The ‘Rhenish’ was Schumann’s last symphony (the symphony we know as No. 4 was actually written after No. 1), and is general regarded as his brightest and most abandoned: at this stage he had made the decision to move away from academic, keyboard-bound composition to a freer, more spontaneous method of developing musical ideas in … Read more
