The Austrian composer's first symphony meshed the imagination and narrative of the symphonic poem with the architectural cohesion of earlier models. His crazily ambitious project changed the genre for ever

In which Schumann reinvented his own compositional language and created an alternative way of thinking about the symphony – despite the onset of the syphilis that was eventually to kill him

Max's first symphony is shot through with the presence of the sea and his isolated Orkney home. This is music that seethes and churns and shimmers and glows

Dismiss Elgar as a purveyor of fusty romanticism at your peril. This symphony glows with a strange, veiled radiance and reveals his true colouristic genius, writes Tom Service

In the third in his symphony series, Tom Service goes back to 1786 Prague and Mozart's 38th symphony, in which you can hear the composer straining at the limits of what his orchestra, and the form, can do.

Shostakovich's final symphony asks profound and disquieting questions and offers only ambiguities in return, writes Tom Service

In the first in his new series Tom Service looks at the most famous, and influential, symphonic work of them all

Next week, Tom Service begins a weekly series about the symphony, exploring through the greatest 50 how it tells the story of music and also our own place in the world