Israel Philharmonic Orchestra

Mahler famously told Sibelius that “the symphony must be like the world—it must embrace everything.” If any comes close, it is Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, with music that moves from an ominous invocation of Nature awakening, through a raucous march of Pan, a song of angels, and on to a final overwhelming and glorious triumph of universal love.

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Mahler didn’t live to complete anything more than the opening Adagio of his Symphony No. 10, but what he left takes the audience on a powerful voyage filled with pathos, including one of the most truly heart-wrenching and terrifying moments in all symphonic music. Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique takes the listener on a compelling journey as well—what Bernstein called “the first psychedelic music trip.” Berlioz uses kaleidoscopic orchestral colors in a phantasmagoric tale of madness to depict an opium overdose, hallucinations of murder and execution, and a macabre Witches’ Sabbath.

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

The Paris audience attending the 1923 premiere of Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 were expecting a work driven by the same furious energy as his ballet scores. Instead, they were surprised by a beautiful concerto with a lyrical quality and a particularly rhapsodic opening solo. The 1805 audience at the first public performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 was stunned when they were presented with this truly revolutionary work. They encountered the most powerful symphony ever written. Beethoven’s mighty “Eroica” changed the face of symphonic music and heralded the age of Romanticism.