# Your Top 10 Sixth Symphonies!



## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

Moving on to the half dozen.
I noticed Hurwitz is doing the same thing on youtube and he's already at #6 too. We may need to change up a gear!

So without further ado, what are, in your opinion, the greatest, or just your personal favorite_ sixth _symphonies?

Mine:

1. Mahler (THE sixth)
2. Bruckner (his greatest symphony, I know I'm weird)
3. Beethoven (that other sixth)
4. Nielsen (so strange, so deep)
5. Shostakovich (like the 6th better than the 5th)
6. Hartmann (one of the greatest symphonies of the 20th century!)
7. Vaughan Williams (the creepy one)
8. Bax (best of the 7, probably)
9. Pettersson (that other creepy one)
10. Myaskovsky (the biggest of the 27, and probably the best)

So no Prokofiev, Sibelius, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky, sue me.
And whoever comes up with Schubert 6 should get his ears cleaned, that's a piece of trash.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

OTOMHAU:


Mahler
Beethoven
Tchaikovsky
Sibelius
Myaskovsky
Bax
Bruckner
Shostakovich
Simpson
Nielsen


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

As Hartmann was already mentioned, I cannot claim a very original list; I should revisit RWV, not sure I remember anything about it.

Mahler
Bruckner
Dvorak
Beethoven
Sibelius
Hartmann
Tchaikovsky
Haydn (Le Matin)
Prokofiev
Nielsen


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

RobertJTh said:


> Moving on to the half dozen.
> So without further ado, what are, in your opinion, the greatest, or just your personal favorite_ sixth _symphonies?


Mahler
Beethoven
Bruckner
Prokofiev
Dvorak
Shostakovich

Vaughan Williams
Schuman
Martinu

Tchaikovsky


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Mahler, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner


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## Anooj (Dec 5, 2021)

Tchaikovsky
Mahler
Beethoven
Glazunov
Shostakovich
Bruckner
Dvorak
Sibelius
Vaughan Williams
Schubert


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

With 6, you get eggroll

1. Vagn Holmboe's Symphony No. 6, Opus 43 (1947)
2. Benjamin Frankel's Opus 49 (1969)
3. Eduard Tubin (1954)
4. Ib Norholm's 1981 Opus 85 "Moralities, or, There May Be Many Miles to the Nearest Spider"
5. "On the Outline of the Mountains of Brazil" (1944) by Villa-Lobos
6. Aulis Sallinen's 1990 Opus 65 "From a New Zealand Diary"
7. "Fantaisies symphoniques" (1953) by Bohuslav Martinů
8. Charles Tournemire's Opus 48 for tenor, chorus, organ and orchestra (1915-18)
9. Nikolai Miaskovsky's Opus 23 (1921-'23)
10. "Vincentiana" (1992) by Einojuhani Rautavaara


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## haziz (Sep 15, 2017)

1. Tchaikovsky
2. Dvořák
3. Beethoven
4. Glazunov
5. Sibelius


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

Today:

*By known number (#6):*

1. Tchaikovsky
2. Beethoven
3. Bruckner
4. Prokofiev
5. Mahler
6. Bax
7. Sibelius
8. Nielsen
9. Dvorák
10. Schubert

=======================================
*By true order of composition:*

1. Beethoven
2. Tchaikovsky (#5 in E minor, op. 64)
3. Prokofiev
4. Mahler
5. Bax
6. Bruckner (#4 in E-flat major "Romantic")
7. Sibelius
8. Nielsen
9. Dvorák
10. Schubert



RobertJTh said:


> And whoever comes up with Schubert 6 should get his ears cleaned, that's a piece of trash.


I enjoy Schubert's #6. I think that he is never pretentious and I like his style, including in this symphony. Perhaps it's not one of his best works but it's very far from being trash. I'm satisfied with my Abbado/COE recording of it.


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## Bruce (Jan 2, 2013)

No surprises from me:


Atterberg
Roy Harris
Beethoven
Haydn
Holmboe
Pettersson
Piston
Sumera
Silvestrov
Vaughan-Williams
Sibelius
I know that's 11, but some contributors didn't reach 10, so this will make up for it, in part. 

And thanks for mentioning Tournemire, Prodromides. I had forgotten that one. I heard his Seventh Symphony quite some time ago, and found it unrelievedly tedious. So was quite surprised when I heard his sixth, which is quite another thing.


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## Philidor (11 mo ago)

1. Mahler
2. Beethoven
3. Bruckner 
4. Sibelius
5. Shostakovich
6. Nielsen
7. Prokofiev
8. Nørgård
9. Tüür
10. Haydn ("Le Matin")


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

1. Mahler
2. Beethoven
3. Weinberg
4. Penderecki
5. Myaskovsky
6. Shostakovich
7. Prokofiev
8. Vaughan Williams
9. Bax
10. Frankel


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Prodromides said:


> With 6, you get eggroll
> 
> 1. Vagn Holmboe's Symphony No. 6, Opus 43 (1947)
> 2. Benjamin Frankel's Opus 49 (1969)
> ...


I really enjoy your comments. You highlight a lot of 20th century and contemporary music I should look into.


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## Highwayman (Jul 16, 2018)

Beethoven
Mahler
Vaughan Williams
Nørgård
Sessions
Hartmann
Wellesz
Sumera
Guarnieri
Nystroem


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Sixths of current or perennial interest to me in random order:

Shostakovich
Prokofiev
Beethoven
Haydn
Weinberg
Sibelius
Nielsen
Mahler
Tchaikovsky
Vaughan-Williams


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

1. Mahler
2. Beethoven
3. Tchaikovsky
4. Bruckner
5. Cipriani Potter
6. Dvorak
7. Shostakovich
8. Sibelius
9. Prokofiev
10. Nielsen


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## tortkis (Jul 13, 2013)

Beethoven
Wilms
Bruckner
Tchaikovsky
Mahler
Myaskovsky
Nørgård "At the End of the Day"


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## Waehnen (Oct 31, 2021)

Equal sixths!

Tchaikovsky
Beethoven
Bruckner
Sibelius
Mahler

Gotta love them equal sixths!

Following the equals are

Nielsen
Prokofiev


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## Georgieva (7 mo ago)

My selection

1. Mahler
2. Tchaikovsky
2. Beethoven
3. Bax
4. Dvorák
5. Schubert
6. Sibelius
7. Bruckner
8. Shostakovich
9. Nielsen
10. Myaskovsky


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

Xisten267 said:


> I enjoy Schubert's #6. I think that he is never pretentious and I like his style, including in this symphony. Perhaps it's not one of his best works but it's very far from being trash. I'm satisfied with my Abbado/COE recording of it.


I was exaggerating quite a bit of course, but I feel that after his lovely 5th Schubert had serious trouble deciding what direction to take with his symphonic music - and that crisis resulted in a number of unfinished attempts, and the 6th, which sounds like a forced attempt to get on the bandwagon of Rossini. It's Schubert disavowing his own wonderful style in favor of the popular fad of the day.
The E major 7th is even worse, and Schubert had the good sense of abandoning it and spend his time on more worthy pieces.

My "choice" 6th that I enjoy only for the orchestral playing and the overall vision is Van Beinum's with the CGO - but not even a genius conductor can turn it into a masterpiece.


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## Highwayman (Jul 16, 2018)

Georgieva said:


> 3. Bach


Which Bach is this?


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## Georgieva (7 mo ago)

Dear friend, thank you.

This is the reason that I don't like auto-correct programs. Apologies.
Of course, it is Arnold Bax ( Symphony 10)


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

At least Joh. Christian and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote a 6th symphony as they wrote more than 6 in total (maybe also Joh. Christoph Friedrich) but as there is to my knowledge no official numbering of them, it would be difficult to tell which.


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

1. Peter Tchaikovsky (1893)
2. Alexey Rybnikov (2008)
3. Anton Bruckner (1881)
4. Ludwig van Beethoven (1808)
5. Gustav Mahler (1904)
6. Sergei Prokofiev (1947)
7. Evgeny Brusilovsky (1965)
8. Janis Ivanovs (1949)
9. Erkki Melartin (1925)
10. Antonin Dvorak (1880)


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

My favorite 6th Symphonies:

1. Beethoven "Pastorale"
2. Tchaikovsky "Pathetique"
3. Shostakovich
4. Walter Piston
5. William Schuman
6. Vaughan Williams
7. Sibelius
8. NIelsen
9. Mahler
10. Bruckner


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## Bill Cooke (May 20, 2017)

Mahler
Beethoven
Prokofiev
Vaughan Williams
Tchaikovsky
Piston
Holmboe
Lajtha
Martinu
Tubin


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## justekaia (Jan 2, 2022)

Mahler
Pettersson
Shostakovich
Tchaikovsky
Hartmann
Rochberg
Sallinen
Sumera
K.Meyer
Rautavaara


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

Bruce said:


> And thanks for mentioning Tournemire, Prodromides. I had forgotten that one. I heard his Seventh Symphony quite some time ago, and found it unrelievedly tedious. So was quite surprised when I heard his sixth, which is quite another thing.


You're welcome, Bruce. I've not heard Tournemire's 7th, but I plan on placing Charles T. within my Top 10 for symphonies numbered 8 (whenever RobertJTh gets around to it  )


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## tobias.mostel (6 mo ago)

Tschaikoveky (Toscanini & Philadelphia SO 1941)
Tschaikovsky (Furtwangler & Berlin 1938)
Tschaikovsky ( Mengleberg Concertgebau Orchestra 1941)

That's probably enough


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Sort of ranked:

1. Mahler; Beethoven; 
2. Prokofiev; Vaughan Williams; Tchaikovsky; 
3. Shostakovich; Martinu; Maxwell Davies.


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## Bruce (Jan 2, 2013)

Prodromides said:


> You're welcome, Bruce. I've not heard Tournemire's 7th, but I plan on placing Charles T. within my Top 10 for symphonies numbered 8 (whenever RobertJTh gets around to it  )


Thanks for the heads up. I have not heard his 8th, but will certainly be listening to it soon. Makes me wonder if the recording I have of his 7th is just a bad performance.


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## Andante Largo (Apr 23, 2020)

Sibelius - Symphony No. 6 in D minor, Op. 104 (1923)
Melartin - Symphony No. 6, Op. 100 (1924)


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

*Bruckner* - one of his less heavy ones, and the first one I heard. While I don't agree that its his best, the first two movements are arguably as good as anything else he wrote.
*Beethoven* - mainly for the first movement, which for me amounts to a sort of protoypical minimalism, with repeating figures mimicking the patterns found in nature.



Xisten267 said:


> I enjoy Schubert's #6. I think that he is never pretentious and I like his style, including in this symphony. Perhaps it's not one of his best works but it's very far from being trash. I'm satisfied with my Abbado/COE recording of it.





RobertJTh said:


> I was exaggerating quite a bit of course, but I feel that after his lovely 5th Schubert had serious trouble deciding what direction to take with his symphonic music - and that crisis resulted in a number of unfinished attempts, and the 6th, which sounds like a forced attempt to get on the bandwagon of Rossini. It's Schubert disavowing his own wonderful style in favor of the popular fad of the day.


It might not be the strongest card in Schubert's deck, but keep in mind that we've only got 6 mature symphonies from him. The first two are juvinelia, so his cycle really kicks in with the third. I think its still more Schubert than Rossini (listen to the minuet), but I find it less memorable than other comparably light works (Rosamunde, for example, has better tunes).



> The E major 7th is even worse, and Schubert had the good sense of abandoning it and spend his time on more worthy pieces.


I'm not sure about that particular piece, weren't parts of it combined by scholars to form the tenth? I know the tenth is a composite piece. In any case, Schubert left a whole lot of unfinished scores, and the reason is less about his judgement and more about his dissolute lifestyle. I don't know if he ever came back to completing any such pieces, but among them are his finest works (e.g. the 8th symphony and 12th quartet). It could be that had he lived longer, he'd have simply continued the same habit of laying aside works and never coming back to them.


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## leonsm (Jan 15, 2011)

Pettersson
Atterberg
Mahler
Penderecki
Dvorak


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## tobias.mostel (6 mo ago)

Sid James said:


> *Bruckner* - one of his less heavy ones, and the first one I heard. While I don't agree that its his best, the first two movements are arguably as good as anything else he wrote.
> *Beethoven* - mainly for the first movement, which for me amounts to a sort of protoypical minimalism, with repeating figures mimicking the patterns found in nature.
> 
> 
> ...


Hello, Sir James, 
Toscanini had such a robust way with Schubert's second symphony that it can't be considered an early work; The performance appears to be an early one with the NBC-1938. Toscanini's handling of the score is to make it sound massive in places, light in others, crazy with syncopation or not. It's a wonderful reading.


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## tobias.mostel (6 mo ago)

tobias.mostel said:


> Hello, Sir James,
> Toscanini had such a robust way with Schubert's second symphony that it can't be considered an early work; The performance appears to be an early one with the NBC-1938. Toscanini's handling of the score is to make it sound massive in places, light in others, crazy with syncopation or not. It's a wonderful reading.


....Hey Sid, I called you 'sir' because I didn't have my glasses on, and from the distance of my eyes, to the screen, Sid looked like Sir. Sorry.


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

Sid James said:


> I'm not sure about that particular piece, weren't parts of it combined by scholars to form the tenth? I know the tenth is a composite piece. In any case, Schubert left a whole lot of unfinished scores, and the reason is less about his judgement and more about his dissolute lifestyle. I don't know if he ever came back to completing any such pieces, but among them are his finest works (e.g. the 8th symphony and 12th quartet). It could be that had he lived longer, he'd have simply continued the same habit of laying aside works and never coming back to them.


Schubert's 7th is like Mahler's 10th, a composition that's complete with no gaps, but exists only as a couple of continuous staves in short score, mostly even just a single line, with only the first 110 bars in full score. The musical material is really nothing to write home about, it continues the light, Rossini-eque style of the 6th, but at this point Schubert must have realized he had taken a wrong path, and he abandoned work on the symphony.

There has been (at least?) three attempts to make the piece performable, the 19th century Barnett version, which was really well done and pretty idiomatic (it was long thought to be lost, but luckily a set of handwritten parts was recently discovered - why hasn't it been recorded yet?)
Then there's Weingartner's romanticized version, which has been recorded a couple of times - and I can't suppress a smile when listening to it. Weingartner keeps the first 110 bars like Schubert wrote them, then, when the texture thins out, and he starts to fill in the harmonies and counterpoint, there's a jarring change of style. Suddenly we're in the era of Bruckner and Richard Strauss. That and a number of cuts make it a rather weird listening experience, but at least it's brilliantly orchestrated, it sounds good and has rich textures in spite of the primitive source material.
Which can't be said of the Newboult arrangement, which is a dry as dust scholarly affair. Where Weingartner tried to improve the music, Newboult just lays bare the utter insignificance of the musical material. Which of course is a valid musicological stance, but we're not dealing with Mahler's 10th here, which is great music even in its unfinished state. This is 3rd rate Schubert, it really needs some extra effort to make it bearable for the audience.

The 10th doesn't have anything to do with the 7th, it exists in a collection of fragments rather than in a continuous score. Newboult made a performing version in 3 movements, with a first movement that has none of the qualities of Schubert's mature symphonies, it sounds like an awkward relapse into an older style. Then there's an dark-sounding adagio, touching and convincingly late Schubert, but still with some structural problems. And a scherzo-finale-fugue hybrid that's just an incoherent mess, cobbled together by Newboult using all kind of disjointed sketches, including some counterpoint exercises Schubert made for his lessons with Sechter. I'd say the only part worth listening to is the slow movement.
There's several recordings, including Marriner/ASMF (dry as dust) and, much more rewarding, Bartholomee/Liege. The latter inserts an earlier scherzo, taken from a collection of sketches for yet another symphony, between the adagio and the "finale" to make a standard four-movement, and it works pretty well like this. Bartholomee plays the whole thing like it's a lost Bruckner symphony, dark and heavy, and that approach works so much better than Marriner's light and fluffy nothingness.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

tobias.mostel said:


> Hello, Sir James,
> Toscanini had such a robust way with Schubert's second symphony that it can't be considered an early work; The performance appears to be an early one with the NBC-1938. Toscanini's handling of the score is to make it sound massive in places, light in others, crazy with syncopation or not. It's a wonderful reading.


There's nothing wrong with such works, they often display a freshness and vitality, and the examples by Schubert are no exception. I quite like his _Sonatensatz D. 28_, a movement for piano trio, which is bright and charming.



RobertJTh said:


> Schubert's 7th is like Mahler's 10th, a composition that's complete with no gaps, but exists only as a couple of continuous staves in short score, mostly even just a single line, with only the first 110 bars in full score. The musical material is really nothing to write home about, it continues the light, Rossini-eque style of the 6th, but at this point Schubert must have realized he had taken a wrong path, and he abandoned work on the symphony.
> 
> There has been (at least?) three attempts to make the piece performable, the 19th century Barnett version, which was really well done and pretty idiomatic (it was long thought to be lost, but luckily a set of handwritten parts was recently discovered - why hasn't it been recorded yet?)
> Then there's Weingartner's romanticized version, which has been recorded a couple of times - and I can't suppress a smile when listening to it. Weingartner keeps the first 110 bars like Schubert wrote them, then, when the texture thins out, and he starts to fill in the harmonies and counterpoint, there's a jarring change of style. Suddenly we're in the era of Bruckner and Richard Strauss. That and a number of cuts make it a rather weird listening experience, but at least it's brilliantly orchestrated, it sounds good and has rich textures in spite of the primitive source material.
> Which can't be said of the Newboult arrangement, which is a dry as dust scholarly affair. Where Weingartner tried to improve the music, Newboult just lays bare the utter insignificance of the musical material. Which of course is a valid musicological stance, but we're not dealing with Mahler's 10th here, which is great music even in its unfinished state. This is 3rd rate Schubert, it really needs some extra effort to make it bearable for the audience.


I appreciate your explanation. It sounds like there's not much of the 7th to work with in the first place. 



> The 10th doesn't have anything to do with the 7th, it exists in a collection of fragments rather than in a continuous score. Newboult made a performing version in 3 movements, with a first movement that has none of the qualities of Schubert's mature symphonies, it sounds like an awkward relapse into an older style. Then there's an dark-sounding adagio, touching and convincingly late Schubert, but still with some structural problems. And a scherzo-finale-fugue hybrid that's just an incoherent mess, cobbled together by Newboult using all kind of disjointed sketches, including some counterpoint exercises Schubert made for his lessons with Sechter. I'd say the only part worth listening to is the slow movement.
> There's several recordings, including Marriner/ASMF (dry as dust) and, much more rewarding, Bartholomee/Liege. The latter inserts an earlier scherzo, taken from a collection of sketches for yet another symphony, between the adagio and the "finale" to make a standard four-movement, and it works pretty well like this. Bartholomee plays the whole thing like it's a lost Bruckner symphony, dark and heavy, and that approach works so much better than Marriner's light and fluffy nothingness.


I used to own Bartholomee's performance of the 10th. I must have come across the information about a lost symphony being part of the 10th in the notes to that disc. I remember hearing the 10th in concert, which was rare many years ago as it still is now. Incidentally, I like Berio's _Rendering, _which embeds the fragments of the piece into an almost ambient filler. Its probably a less radical and more conservative approach to unfinished music like this, compared to the usual practice of copying the fragments to recreate the piece. One analogy is Venus de Milo. Do we need to give her arms to appreciate her beauty?


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## MusicSybarite (Aug 17, 2017)

*Mahler
Langgaard
Nielsen
Sibelius
Prokofiev
Bax
Dvorak
Holmboe
Malipiero
Tchaikovsky*


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