Commitment Factor: About 85 minutes.

Vital Statistics: Romantic Period. A large-scale work for chorus, orchestra and soloists.

What to Listen For: The intense drama and soaring lyricism of the Requiem have led some to call it “Verdi’s greatest opera.” In times past, this implied a certain lack of spirituality — and in fact, Verdi was not [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Tchaikovsky always hated his most recent work–none more so that this, his most popular symphony. He called it “artificial” and “repellent.” Fortunately, no one else paid attention.
Commitment Factor: About 50 minutes
Vital Statistics: Romantic Period (1887). A four-movement symphony with a “motto” theme that returns in each movement.
What to Listen For: The [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: This symphony was composed as recovery therapy following a rather half-hearted suicide attempt. A tormented homosexual, Tchaikovsky foolishly married a neurotic music student he hardly knew, then tried to kill himself by standing naked in the Volga river in mid-winter. His wife, whom he never divorced, went crazy and died in an [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: The most popular of this cycle of six symphonic poems is the second, “Vltava” (in German called “The Moldau”), whose main theme became the Israeli national anthem.
Commitment Factor: About 75 minutes
Vital Statistics: Romantic Period (1879). A cycle of six symphonic poems each describing some facet of Czech heritage or history.
What to [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Jean Sibelius composed his Third Symphony on a commission from the British composer Granville Bantock. Although premiered in Finland, it was performed in London soon afterward with Sibelius conducting, thus beginning England’s long national obsession with the Finnish master.
Commitment Factor: About 26 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Romantic period. A symphony in three movements.
What to [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: This symphony was written at the same time as the First Symphony, but Schumann revised it later so it got an updated number. No one believes these revisions were an improvement on the original.
Commitment Factor: About 30 minutes
Vital Statistics: Romantic Period (1841). Schumann’s most radical symphony: although in four movements, he directs [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: The title refers to the Dusseldorf, the city by the Rhine where Schumann was engaged as a conductor of the town orchestra. He was, by all accounts, a really lousy conductor, and he had eight children to support.
Commitment Factor: About 35 minutes
Vital Statistics: Romantic Period (1850). This is, unusually, a five-movement symphony, [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: For reasons no one particularly cares about anymore, it just so happens that Schumann’s First and Fourth Symphonies were composed in the same year. The Second and Third came later. Go figure.
Commitment Factor: About 30 minutes
Vital Statistics: Romantic Period (1841). This jolly, four-movement symphony, like many Romantic works, has a “program,” or [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: During the time when Franz Schubert, dying of syphillis, was editing the proofs of this gloomiest and most despairing of his major works, he wrote to a friend asking him to send the latest books by his favorite novelist, James Fenimore Cooper!
Commitment Factor: About 70 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Romantic Period. A song-cycle [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: There were many attempts to perform this greatest of Franz Schubert’s symphonies during his lifetime, all of them unsuccessful, owing to what was perceived at the time as its difficulty and its excessive length. The musicians in the London Philharmonic kept shouting “Where’s the tune?” during the wonderfully tuneful last movement. Question [...]