Mysliveček, il divino Boemo (the title seems to have been a fictional exaggeration) was particularly associated with opera. But his instrumental works outnumber the operatic by some margin and some of his best-known works, to us at least, are his concertos. The years of his greatest triumphs were between about 1767 and 1777, a decade that saw foreign successes, meetings with Mozart and considerable operatic esteem. His Six Symphonies of 1772 are indebted to the Italianate three-movement form, which they have absorbed with considerable vivacity, and they show individual touches – modulations, wind solos and the like – that give them an individual stamp.

Jarvi directs a characteristically warm and urgent performance of this exuberant inspiration of the 24-year-old composer. It is by far the longest symphony that Dvorak ever wrote, and was longer still in its original form, before the composer revised it. As Ray Minshull put it, when commenting on the Kertesz/LSO issue, which he had produced for Decca, Dvorak ''later learnt to be jubilant more concisely''. The jubilation is what matters, and there is plenty of that on this record yet the issue brings my first significant disappointment in Jarvi's Dvorak series.

The first of Dvorak's nine symphonies and the last of his symphonic poems come here in a generous coupling, both of them among the longest works he ever wrote in each genre. The only rival version of the symphony on CD is the Kubelik, and that only comes in the six-disc DG set of the complete cycle. As for The Hero's Song, this is a real rarity. It is in fact the very last orchestral work that Dvorak wrote, in 1897 some seven years before his death. Unlike earlier symphonic poems, it has no specific programme, though the journey from darkness to light in the unspecified hero's life is clearly enough established.

This disc, well recorded in 1986, is typical of the whole series of Dvorak symphonies. It offers performances that are lively, perceptive and which are presented in glowing sound also giving considerable detail in a natural sound-stage without spotlighting.

Dutch composer Matthijs Vermeulen’s wildly complex and inventive music resists easy classification, and yet it does not really do his work justice to say it is an amalgam of Berg, Varèse, Ives, Hartmann, Pettersson, and others. But in effect that is just what it is–an inscrutable, polymelodic kitchen-sink approach to composition. And it is no less fascinating as a result. At once relentless, frantic, fierce, and desolate, Vermeulen’s compositions were barely performed during his own lifetime (1888-1967), and he did not help his cause by systematically estranging himself from the musical establishment (Mengelberg, among others).

This recording offers impassioned, clear, and intelligent presentations of two little-known but impressive pieces of earlier twentieth century music.

Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia performed Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 6 in A minor, "Tragic," in concerts to mark the 100th anniversary of the composer's death, and this 2011 EMI Classics release captures the excitement and amazing precision of the playing. While this might seem like a fairly leisurely run through the symphony, with a timing of just over 1 hour 24 minutes and requiring two discs to hold it, Pappano keeps the energy and interest levels elevated throughout, and despite taking tempos that would be momentum-killers in less skillful hands, he gives the music urgency when it most needs it.

This live double CD of Antonin Dvorák's Symphony No. 9, "From the New World" and the Cello Concerto may put listeners in two minds. On one hand, it's hard to fault Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia for the refreshing interpretations and precise musical execution in both performances, and cellist Mario Brunello is exceptionally dramatic and vivid in his solo turn at the concerto. On the other, a veritable plague of sound defects seems to have descended on these recordings, largely from the close microphone placement that picks up every random noise from the musicians, as well as the general rustling one expects of a concert audience.

The symphonies presented on this CD are all quite different in their compositional intentions and basic stylistic traits, but they do evidence certain parallels in their formal design (two works in one movement, two times three movements), their origins and in several other aspects.

The first commercial gramophone recording of a German symphony after World War II was that of Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Foutrh Symphony for string orchestra under the derection of Franz André. More than fourty years later, this work once agains opens a complete studio recording of Hartmann's symphonie, now under Ingo Metzmacher.

Laurence Equilbey, conducting her period-instrument Insula Orchestra, champions the composer Louise Farrenc, a prominent and pioneering figure in 19th century Paris. This album presents two of Farrenc’s three symphonies, No. 1 in C minor, first heard in 1845, and No. 3 in G minor, premiered in 1849. “The score is so well written that it deserves a prominent place in the history of the early Romantic symphony,” wrote the Financial Times after a performance of the Symphony No 3 in London, marking International Women’s Day 2018. “Equilbey and the Insula orchestra gave it a fleet, fiery performance. Their crusading spirit lived up to the day’s billing.” The Daily Telegraph observed that the symphony “was full of engaging inventions … It’s clearly a fine piece; all it needs now is to be heard, many times.”

The newest addition to Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra's award-winning survey of Shostakovich's orchestral works takes on symphonies from the opposite ends of the composer's life. Shostakovich's first symphony, composed when he was only 19, announced his presence to the world, while his 15th seemingly grapples with his impending mortality. The Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10, was written as a graduation piece for his composition class at the Leningrad Conservatory. The composer's youth and the influences of Stravinsky and Prokofiev are evident in the work, but there are plenty of allusions to his later style. Slightly on the slower side overall, the emotion and forward motion of the music is not lost. The Symphony No. 15 in A major, Op. 141, written a few years before the composer's death, though not programmatic, seems to present a look at the cycle of life.

The third volume in Marc Soustrot's series on Naxos of the five symphonies of Camille Saint-Saëns presents one of his least familiar works, the Symphony in F major, "Urbs Roma," an early effort from 1856, written when the composer was 21 years old. The symphony won a prize at a competition held by the Bordeaux Société Ste Cécile, no doubt in recognition of Saint-Saëns' skillful orchestration and many striking passages that, by turns, evoke Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schumann. However, Saint-Saëns thought so little of the piece that he didn't publish it, and it subsequently suffered from decades of neglect.

It is quite incredible that the genre of the Symphonie lives on after Mahler. Mahler's Ninth Symphonie was a farewell to beauty,the Master Signifier and the images of childhood, the fragmented yet challenging experience of the metropolis. The transgression of beauty was to cloud over Europe in ways Mahler's imagination could hardly fathom. With Hartmann the Symphonie lives in a exiled world, it is not one free to speak, it is one where the voice, (as Agamben says someplace) carries Being, yet in what form? It is a voice smashed from the SS jackboots, a voice of the dispossessed and the homeless.

The violinist and composer Pieter Van Maldere was once the most famous musicians in the Low Countries and can be considered among the most important creators of the classical symphony. He uses lively and original melodic language, idiomatic to the violin.