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Listened to Atterberg 8 today with great satisfaction. The outer movements seem almost tocattalike in their relentless activity, yet they have the dramatic shape of symphonic movements. The slow movement comes from a place I want to revisit.

Please forgive a bit of biography... in my 13th year the opening of Brahms 1, played to the hilt, reached my angst-ridden ears for the first time at about 112 db in a cramped rehearsal hall. I shall never have another Brahms experience like that. Nonetheless, I still believe Brahms 2 is, in some ways, the greater creative achievement.

But I like the fork that John White is taking. And the difference of opinion. Is Berlioz's "Harold en Italie" a symphony? If so, is it an example of sophomore slump? If not, what of "Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale"?

"Greatest" can become an easy solipsism, and I fall into it as readily as anyone. At the same time, while aesthetics is always slippery and sometimes daft, I'm drawn (like so many) to the notion that there must be *some* measurable metric that makes the neglect of certain composers and music unconscionable. So while this forum is, in a certain sense, recreational, I believe there's also cultural work going on in the sharing here. Important work. A sifting of passions and prejudices with the water clearer afterward. Three centuries ago Bach walked leagues to hear Buxtehude play. Today the complete works of Beethoven can be stored on the head of a pin and played (with an optional backbeat) in elevators around the world. In short, there's never been a greater need for cultural and historical sifting.

As an example of the useful sifting this forum provides, I would point to Amphissa's astute observation that the music we actually listen to on any given day may not be the music whose impact has made the greatest impression on us on some past day.

Like Amphissa, I listen to quite a few Symphony 2s more often than Mahler 2. Do any of the following reasons resonate? (a) "Variety is the spice of life" (b) I try to listen actively, not passively. Mahler sings big things, and today I may have nothing new to contribute to the conversation amidst my quotidian trivialities. (c) Would you only want *best* friends and no other friends?

Great fun, this.

TerraEpon, you remind me that I was thrilled by Borodin 2 as a teenager. Have to listen to it again. I'm intrigued that Hovhaness 2 is not Hovhaness's second.

Pengeli, my response to the Tubin I've heard is similar to yours. At the same early age I sneered at Hanson 2 for all the wrong reasons. Shame on me. And Amphissa, thanks for the generous list.
-- Paine 2 exceeded my ignorant low expectations so greatly that I'm not sure what to think. But if I add Paine 2 I guess I'd have to add Chadwick 2, and I'm *guessing* that Converse 2 would outshine them both.
-- Have to make a point to listen again to Scriabin 2 enough times to let it sink in. I mainly hear it as a serious attempt to move past the dichotomy between sensuality and emotional turmoil essayed in 1, but so far (to my ears) Scriabin (like Beethoven in *his* second) didn't quite arrive here at a point of unmistakable authenticity.
-- Hovhanness -- you're quite right: there's nothing else like it, and it's powerful (at least in Reiner's old rendition). How could I forget?
-- The others in your list will be new discoveries for me.

Mark Thomas, I quite agree with you about Draeseke 3. (Could the piano concerto -- written in the same general time frame -- *really* be as much of a dud as it sounds like in current recordings?) There are SO many great thirds. But I still think the greatest ever is Beethoven 3.

Alan Howe, the more I study Draeseke in score, the more he impresses. I will definitely give Raff 2, Berger 2, and Herzogenberg 2 some listens.

The same goes for Rubinstein 2 (seven movement version), too. Thanks for that, Peter1953. As a keyboard player I've had a hard time warming up to the Rubinstein sonatas. Hearing a performance of Rubinstein's symphony 2 might help me tune in.

I'll confess, all, to two other seconds that I'm particularly fond of: Wetz 2 and Furtwangler 2 -- the former one of the most lyrical symphonies ever, the second a personal favorite only after some years of mixed listening.

Replying to Peter1953. The Burgmueller has to be one of the best sonatas ever composed by a teenager! A combination of excellent training plus enormous talent. Regarding the Hiller concertos, don't forget his Konzertstueck (op. 113), which may be his most winning piano concerto. A solo piano work of enormous charm is Hiller's Impromptu, op. 97. But I get the feeling that really to understand Hiller means finding the rapt, parlando style at the heart of the Ghazals, his most original contribution to keyboard literature.

Re Bates' name: Remember the old Joe Green/Giuseppe Verdi bit? I wonder, too, if "Stanley" has aesthetic or class associations in Britain? Would "Stanley Beethoven" sound promising? Even with Mozart we usually prefer Amadeus to Gottlieb.

I've heard two of Atterberg's symphonies, and they've grown on me, though not quite as much as I hoped they would. If I had to choose between Atterberg and Edward Tubin (an Estonian who worked in Sweden), however, I'd go with Tubin, one of those rare composers whose talents were symphonic and whose symphonies have a hard-to-define grandeur of conception and execution, like Beethoven or Sibelius.

Among novelists, there's the well-known phenomenon of "sophomore slump." I'm not sure if this happens with composers. Most second symphonies (in order of composition) seem to me to be as good as their creator's first symphonies. Is Brahms's second a lesser work than his first? Or are symphonies with life-affirming first movements less great than those that feature struggle and conflict? (What would Aristotle say?)

Here's my personal short list of best second symphonies (in order of composition), based on my (limited) listening history. I'm sharing this in hopes that some of you with much broader knowledge will share some of your own favorite second symphonies that I can get to know.

Best second symphony ever: Mahler
Short list of other favorite second symphonies:
Bax
Brahms
Draeseke
d'Indy
Mendelssohn ("No 5")
Rachmaninov
Schumann ("No. 4")
Sibelius
Stenhammar
Vaughan Williams

Bruckner's second (Symphony "0") sounds to me like a warm-up. If you count his F-minor as first and make "No. 1" his second, then that would go on my short list.
Does anyone have an opinion about Tubin's second (which I have yet to hear)?

I'll second Draeseke Symphony1/3 (as performed under George Hanson). The Dirge from MacDowell's Indian Suite moves me in almost anyone's performance. I'm so glad to see so many clear-headed people listening to and liking Paderewski. He was a remarkable composer, and I'm always swept away when bashing though his piano music, particularly the sonata. Looking forward to hearing some of the other composers' works mentioned.

I've wanted to explore Woelfl more (on the keyboard) but available scores seem to be sparse. His publication history is readily available, and from that it would appear that he supplied the Viennese public with sonatas on a regular basis.

I'm always a bit leery of comparisons with Clementi because that composer pulled himself up by his bootstraps from an enthusiastic, virtuostic, but musically undernourished beginning to become the composer of the magnificent late works (Gradus, Opus 50, etc.). Many of Clementi's so-called early works are revised versions from a period when he could have known, for example, Woelfl's sonatas (among many others).

Have you considered the Norbert Burgmueller concerto?

Lots of fun reading all of your responses. Following up on Steven Eldredge's post, those who haven't heard the Beethoven 4th with Serkin and Schneider at Marlboro are in for a treat. It may be the most spiritually deep recording ever of the B4 opening. Credit is due to all involved, Wow is all I can say.

Historically, the "concerto problem" (how to do something with the concerto form other than an update on what Mozart did) was big news in the 1840s. Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto is probably the most famous solution. For the piano concerto, Hiller seems to have been the man who figured out a way to thoroughly integrate piano and orchestra, going well beyond the introductory flourishes of Beethoven's Emperor. That's why Schumann was so impressed by Hiller's second and adopted its tactics it in his own Concerto (dedicated to Hiller). At least in its time, the opening of Hiller's second concerto was arresting. Later, of course, Grieg used Schumann as a template. The rest, including Tchaikovsky, is history. Hiller's Konzertstueck is, following Weber's, an alternative response to the "concerto problem," and currently my favorite of his concertos. Entirely sunny, though, unlike Brahms 1. (Vox has a decent performance with Jerome Rose.)

One thing the best 19th-century concerto composers strove for was purity of taste -- freedom from banality, sentimentality, and anything insincere. The problem (for other composers!) with Brahms's first is that it goes so far beyond taste. How many previous concertos had originally been conceived as symphonies?