Albums · Skopia

Every record chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
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5 records

Symphony No. 9

1824

Amateur players filled out the orchestra at the premiere after only two rehearsals, and the singers complained that the high notes were unsingable.

★ 9.7

1808

Four notes, then half an hour that never lets up. It premiered in an under-rehearsed, freezing four-hour concert that nobody enjoyed.

★ 9.3

1830

Berlioz wrote it while obsessed with an Irish actress he had never met. Four timpanists play at once to make the thunder in the third movement.

★ 7.8

1795

Haydn was nearly sixty and had spent thirty years in a prince's service before a promoter took him to London, where he became famous overnight.

★ 7.3

1885

The finale is thirty variations over an eight-bar bass line lifted from Bach. At the private play-through one friend begged him to scrap the finale.

★ 7.0