史上最伟大的二十首交响乐欢乐诵文学城

在史上为数众多的交响乐中，哪些作品是最伟大的? 这当然是一个见仁见智的问题。但是，由BBC音乐杂志2015年9月问卷当前音乐界151位指挥家所评选的最伟大的二十首交响乐作品，仅就专业性的角度来讲，应该是最具有“权威性”的。评选结果如下：

AS VOTED FOR BY 151 OF THE WORLD’S TOP CONDUCTORS

See p34 for how each maestro voted

The mighty symphony has been the bedrock of western orchestral music since its f lowering in the 18th century. But which are the greatest masterpieces of them all?

It’s a classic rags to riches story. From humble beginnings in the Baroque period the symphony has grown in size and influence, becoming a badge of honour among composers clamouring for recognition.

When Haydn went to London in 1791, it was his symphonies the public wanted, not his string quartets or sonatas. They were, literally, the ideal way to make a noise in society, the vehicle for a communal experience wholly different in scale to that of chamber music in a domestic setting. Haydn’s symphonies ‘electrified’ his London audiences, causing ‘a pleasure superior to any that had ever been caused by instrumental music in England’. These were new sounds, bigger and more viscerally exciting than any heard previously, and they were ready to conquer Europe.

The symphony quickly became more than simply social entertainment. Haydn used it as a vehicle of emotion, which intensified when Beethoven took on the symphony. To this day his symphonies are viewed as brilliant models of how music can express the most powerful of human feelings, in ways that even words can’t emulate. How did the symphony so rapidly become capable of this?

The answer lies in how composers quickly developed a habit in their symphonies of pitting one theme against another, weighing the relative merits of each, then pulling their conclusions together. This closely mirrored the processes of debate and interaction used in human communication, and it struck a chord deep in audiences. With Beethoven, the symphony suddenly became a forum of debate about life’s deeper meanings, a source of inspiration and spiritual enlightenment.

This idea of the symphony as a teemingly interactive medium, with intellectual cachet as well as entertainment value, proved irresistible to composers seeking the ultimate challenge of their craft outside opera. Orchestras relished the opportunities for display and impact these works presented, and audiences feasted on the resplendent sounds of the expanded ‘symphony orchestra’, and the frequently momentous import of the music, as the 19th century developed.

And although the 20th century severely tested the ability of composers to make coherent, meaningful statements in a world lacerated by violence and atrocities, the symphony remains, in the words of the late Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, a key medium for making ‘sense of chaos’, and presenting ‘an argument which is comprehensible, even under the most dire circumstances. A symphony is what you make it, and it changes with each generation, with each set of circumstances, and the lives that the composers live’.

But which of the thousands of symphonies written over the centuries is the greatest? To find out, we asked 151 of today’s leading conductors to name the three symphonies they consider to be the greatest. It wasn’t an easy task, but a democratic consensus soon emerged. We counted up the votes, and, where there were tie-breakers, gave the deciding vote to our trusted critics. And so, at last, all is finally revealed overleaf… Terry Blain

Symphonies can express the most powerful of human feelings

20 Bruckner

SYMPHONY NO. 7(1883)

Bruckner pays homage to his hero, Richard Wagner, in a work of great hope and light

Hailed as a masterpiece after its Leipzig premiere in 1883, Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony became his first (and only) instant success. It had taken him two years to write, during which time Wagner – to whom Bruckner had dedicated his gigantic Third Symphony – became ill and died. The Seventh’s sweeping Adagio became a poignant tribute to him with four Wagner tubas included in his honour – the first time these instruments had been used in a symphony. From the yearning opening cello melody to the dramatic hunting horn motif that begins the third movement, the Seventh is full of striking moments, none more so than the brilliant finale, in which shimmering strings and heroic horns surge upwards to a euphoric close. Elinor Cooper

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/ Bernard HaitinkDecca 478 5690

19 Beethoven

SYMPHONY NO. 6(1808)

Beethoven’s groundbreaking pastoral masterpiece is the ultimate hymn to nature

It would be hard to imagine a symphony more different to Beethoven’s stormy, compressed C minor Fifth than the gentle, expansive Pastoral. They were, however, written during the same period and premiered in the same – lengthy – concert in Vienna in 1808. Cast in five titled movements, Beethoven’s Pastoral takes us on a tour of the countryside, complete with birdsong and a sense of bucolic joy. Where the Fifth progresses inexorably, the Sixth meanders and lingers. Until, that is, the Storm, which rips through this peaceful idyll with extraordinary violence. With this major piece of programme music, Beethoven paved the way for Berlioz and Richard Strauss. And his homage to nature encouraged composers, including Mahler, to explore the sounds of the outdoors. Rebecca Franks

London Classical Players/Sir Roger NorringtonVirgin 083 4232

18 Brahms

SYMPHONY NO. 2(1877)

Brahms hits his symphonic stride with a work of surface serenity and dark undercurrents

Schumann prophesied that Brahms would be the greatest symphonist of his age, but – had he lived long enough – even he surely would have wondered when his ‘young eagle’ would actually finish writing a symphony. But once the long-awaited First was done, it was just a matter of months before Brahms had also completed the Second. Written in the summer of 1877, this is on the surface a sunny, serene work. It’s even been dubbed Brahms’s Pastoral. Yet, as ever with his music, a darkly elegiac tone is never far away, set up in the opening movement by timpani, trombones and tuba. A three-note motif – and its developments and variants – underpins the whole four-movement symphony, making this work a remarkable feat of construction, even if all we consciously hear is a delicious outpouring of melody and inventive writing. No wonder it went down well at the premiere, with the critic Eduard Hanslick declaring it an ‘unqualified success’. Rebecca Franks

London Philharmonic Orchestra/ Vladimir JurowskiLPO LPO0043

17 Shostakovich

SYMPHONY NO. 5(1937)

The Soviet composer tapped into a deep well of public emotion with his mighty Fifth

It was in the teeth of official denunciation of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mstensk that Shostakovich composed what appeared to be one of his most conventional works. His Fifth Symphony uses the dignified tones of a neoclassical symphony. Yet it contains hints of a subtext indicating that the work was not simply to mollify Stalin and his cultural henchmen. The symphony sounds a lament in its third movement, expressing what was too dangerous to be said during Stalin’s ‘Great Terror’. Many of the audience at its premiere were reduced to tears by this movement, and the work received a half-hour standing ovation. Daniel Jaffé

BBC National Orchestra of Wales/ Mark WigglesworthBIS-CD-973/974

16 Beethoven

SYMPHONY NO. 7(1812)

Beethoven’s ‘return to life’ – a bubbling cauldron of exuberance and vitality

Beethoven’s Seventh is a restless beast, full of driving, unnerving energy – less about melody, more about rhythm and orchestration. For Wagner, the Symphony’s sunny aspect represented the ‘apotheosis of the dance’, but Carl Maria von Weber saw darker hues within and declared Beethoven ‘ripe for the madhouse’. For sure, it teeters on the edge of obsession, in the hypnotic repetitions of the ambiguous Allegretto (the work’s only ‘slow’ movement) and the syncopated, wayward rhythms of the final Allegro that pushes the orchestra to its absolute limits. Elinor Cooper

Staatskapelle Berlin/Daniel BarenboimWarner 256461890-2

15 Mozart

SYMPHONY NO. 40(1788)

A 35-minute miracle that blends elegance and tragedy, and confounds expectations

Mozart’s penultimate symphony was written during testing times – Don Giovanni had been ill-received by the Viennese and money was short. But out of adversity, and in a single summer, sprung three extraordinary symphonies. No. 40 combines elegance and unease, its dark opening yielding to calmer waters, only to return to despair. Mozart explores this pattern again in the Andante, harmonic clashes, falling motifs and rhythmic twists gently poisoning its bucolic charm. A stately, stormy Minuetto precedes the brilliant, fizzing finale which has at its heart a moment of baffling brilliance. As a preface to the development, the orchestra declaims, in unison, ten of the 12 notes of the western scale. Atonal and entirely modern, it’s a jolting Mozartian masterstroke. Oliver Condy

Scottish Chamber Orchestra/ Sir Charles MackerrasLinn CKD308

14 Sibelius

SYMPHONY NO. 7(1924)

In his final symphony, Sibelius paints a broad, shifting landscape that beguiles with unexpected, twisting paths

Scored in one 22-minute-long movement, originally christened Fantasia sinfonica, Sibelius wrote his Symphony No. 7 at night, aided by substantial amounts of whisky. Extraordinarily, though, the work is among his most lucid and profound musical statements. Within its single movement are four interweaving episodes, continuously floating in the ether, always seeking resolution. Weighty anchor points are dropped by three glorious, heroic calls on a trombone, sounds which seem to emerge from the very beginning of time, but the Seventh’s delicate, transient beauty defies attempts to hold it down. It would be his last symphony before a 30-year musical silence – its closing bars, a major seventh B rising to a burnished C major chord, were described by conductor Sir Colin Davis as ‘the closing of the coffin lid’. Oliver Condy

Lahti Symphony Orchestra/Osmo VänskäBIS BIS-CD864

According to… Paul Daniel

‘The Seventh is incredibly concentrated. Somehow Sibelius has combined all the elements of his quite tormented life and his influences. He’s reduced everything to a musical, emotional, truth and found his way to the simplest means, if you like. And he uses a simple key – C major – and perhaps the simplest theme of all, a scale, to communicate this purity. Symphony No. 7 is the lodestone, the essential base metal, of Sibelius’s musical expression.’

Its trombone calls seem to emerge from the beginning of time

13 Bruckner

SYMPHONY NO. 8(1887/1890)

A synthesis of Bruckner’s symphonic genius – majestic, sensuous and conflicted…

The Austrian’s cathedral-sized Eighth is the apogee of his symphonic achievements. Although Wagnerian in character and scope, chorale-like themes and harmonies flow through all four movements as Bruckner brings his skill as an organist to bear on this grandest of masterpieces. Symphony No. 8 starts with a hushed string tremolo – a homage to the first few bars of Beethoven’s Ninth – that allows the music to emerge from the deep; the troubled opening minutes (Bruckner, suggested conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, battling with his demons) unfold towards what composer Robert Simpson called a ‘blazing calm’. An unsettled, searching scherzo precedes Bruckner’s most divine slow movement, a half-hour supplication of erotic beauty and power. Even here, as major key tussles with minor, things are not as they seem. Peace is hard to grasp. But a resolution awaits with the gleaming Finale, ‘the most significant movement of my life,’ as the composer said, with the themes of previous movements uniting in contented solidarity. Oliver Condy

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/ Riccardo ChaillyDecca 466 6532

12 Brahms

SYMPHONY NO. 3(1883)

Written during a happy summer near the Rhine, Brahms’s concise Third was inspired by the motto ‘ free but happy’

史上最伟大的二十首交响乐 欢乐诵2017-07-21 01:08:36