Ravel’s La Valse

In 1906, Maurice Ravel made some sketches for a tribute to Johann Strauss, the Waltz King. By the time he got back to it, World War I had ravaged Europe, and Ravel's tribute had turned into something much darker.

Mahler’s Symphony No. 3

In his Symphony No. 3, the largest and longest in the current symphonic repertoire, Mahler  leaves the story up to the listener—according to the composer, “you just have to bring along ears and a heart and—not least—willingly surrender to the rhapsodist.”

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4

The Fourth Symphony was a product of the most turbulent time of Tchaikovsky's life—1877, when he met two women (Nadezhda von Meck, a music-loving widow of a wealthy Russian railroad baron, and Antonina Miliukov, an unnoticed student in one of his large lecture classes at the Moscow Conservatory), who forced him to evaluate himself as he never had before.

Sibelius’s Symphony No. 6

In his Symphony #6, Jean Sibelius created a musical sanctuary from the chaos of war and revolution that had engulfed his world. He once said that it reminded him "of the scent of the first snow.”

Britten’s Simple Symphony

When Benjamin Britten was twenty, he took music he had written more than a decade earlier and arranged it into a work he called "Simple Symphony" - a remarkably assured portrait of the artist as a young composer.

Beethoven’s Mass in C

Beethoven's Mass in C may not be as well-known as his Missa Solemnis, but its harmonic daring and deceptively gentle nature changed the Mass the same way his Eroica changed the symphony.