Orchestral Music

    Brahms's first symphony was hailed by enthusiastic supporters as "the tenth", thus declaring what is generally accepted today, that it was the greatest since Beethoven's nine.  His four magnificent symphonies follow on the great Viennese classical tradition.  Brahms was able to build large-scale works in a way that had been beyond the ability of the earlier romantics, and his powers of organic development were as great as those of Beethoven.  But there is also a lyrical warmth in his melodies that shows the influence of romanticism.

    Dvorak owed much to Brahms, and his 'New World' symphony and the fourth symphony in G major are very popular today.  They are tuneful and skillfully orchestrated works, though sometimes a little weak organically.

    Tschaikowsky's symphonies are also very popular, particularly the fourth, fifth and sixth (the 'Pathetic').  They, too, are tuneful and skillfully orchestrated, but they have a passionate and often melancholy quality that is missing from Dvorak's sunnier works.  

    Another very popular symphony belonging to this period is the one in D minor by the Belgian composer Cesar Franck (1822-1890).  This was written when he was 66, and is his only symphony.  Franck settled in Paris, and was a comparatively obscure organist, though he gathered a devoted band of pupils round him.  Most of his music that is of any value was written after the age of 50, and it received little recognition during his lifetime.  In addition to the symphony, he wrote a set of symphonic variations for piano and orchestra, a fine string quartet, a violin sonata, a few piano pieces, of which the 'Prelude, Chorale and Fugue' is the best known, an oratorio 'Les Beatitudes', and a number of organ works.  There is a strong mystical element throughout his writing, and he is very fond of chromaticisms.  

    Symphonies were also written by the Russians Borodin and Glazounov (1865-1936), and by the Austrians Bruckner (1824-1896) and Mahler (1860- 1911).  

    During this period, Brahms and Tschaikowsky each wrote a violin concerto and two piano concertos, while Grieg's piano concerto and Dvorak's 'cello and violin concertos are also popular.  

    But there was also a wealth of programmatic orchestral music, so much that it is impossible to mention it all here.  Works of the concert overture or tone-poem type were written by Borodin ('In the Steppes of Central Asia'), Moussorgsky ('A Night on the Bare Mountain'); Rimsky-Korsakov ('Scheherezade'); Tschaikowsky ('Romeo and Juliet', and 'Francesca da Rimini'); Smetana ('My Fatherland'); Dvorak ('Carnival'); and others.