7 of the Most Epic Symphony Endings in Classical Music History 

The title of this video has recently been renamed from “7 Greatest Symphony Endings…” to “7 of the Most Epic Symphony Endings…”. As the disclaimer in the description states, this list is highly subjective and open-to-suggestions; we never intended the video to be a definitive “Greatest of All Time” list. Instead, the original purpose was always to introduce potential new audiences to the great and wonderful world of classical music, so we included some lesser-known symphonies for a general audience. Also, please remember, no one has time to make an entire hour of all good symphony endings, so please understand if your favorite ending wasn't included. As you may have picked up from some of our comments, we will be making a second (and possibly a third!) video with more amazing symphony finales, so if you have any suggestions, please kindly comment them! We recently uploaded another version of this video with no voiceover that you can find here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QsKYqLEJbnE.htmlsi=XDivJEy7m6dXI8wY Yes Beethoven 9 will be in the next video!!!

The first time you hear Mahler’s second is a lifetime experience. It’s unforgettable.

Irony: you could do an entire video of just Mahler symphony endings and it would almost be perfect in and of itself.

Imagine you go to a Mahler 2 live concert with a good orchestra/choir the first time and you never listened it on CD/youtube, etc before...How overwhelmed by sheer emotions, epicness, loudness you would be? Always when I go to a Mahler 2 live concert I get completely blown away by a hurricane of this epic soundwall with its heartbreaking harmonies and lyrics, leaving me in tears. There was never a symphonic work comparable and there will never be one that could reach Mahler 2...a lonesome monument.

I finally completed my quest to see every mahler symphony live, a quest that began a few years ago when i had the chance to actually discover the 2nd live without any prior listening. This is actually the only time i ever cried listening to music, as I was in a bad place at the moment and I felt that symphony resonating with my very soul. The finale is the greatest piece of music I have ever heard, not only great by itself, but also perfectly resolving 80 minutes of tension and buildup both musically and metaphorically. If angels sang at one's arrival in heaven, this is what you would hear. Mahler was a genius.

Finale of Shostakovich's fifth symphony is not a movement. It's a revolution!

The ending of Brahms' 2nd symphony is one of the most glorious in the whole symphonic repertoire and deserved a place on this list.

The entirety of Dvorak's 9th is classic and the finale is epic!

The coda to Bruckner’s 5th and 8th symphonies define the word ‘epic’, especially when they are taken at a steady, measured pace.

No finale of Mahlers first symphony? The last three minutes are so triumphant and fantastic, i always get goosebumps.

The end of Shostakovich 7 is as epic as it gets. Bernstein's recorded performance with the Chicago Symphony shook dust out of the rafters all the way from Milwaukee to Gary Indiana.

The quietness of Vaughan Williams’ ending to his Symphony No. 5 is nothing short of magnificent.

Finale to Shostakovich's 7 was just, pure victory for me..

I’m a bit surprised that Beethoven didn’t make the list. The endings of the 7th and the 9th are pretty spectacular.

The end of Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7 - that astonishing resolution of the B natural into C.

Mahler 8 as well... epic

Saint Saens' 3rd is also worth checking out.

THE END OF R.V.W. s 4th SYMPHONY IS STUNNING.

It is not technically called a "symphony", but Janacek's Sinfonietta has a killer ending.

Excellent list... I've seven more and seven more after that ... Classical music never ceases to give...

Such a beautiful, wild ride. Thank you. Although choices are always subjective, you chose well, and your descriptions helped newcomers understand what they were experiencing. Bravo.

I love the transition into Tchaikovskys 4.

I'm happy that this ends with the Resurrection because it is beyond comparison to ANY orchestral piece ever composed! It surpasses all other music in it's passion, fear, love, compassion and sheer beauty! I wish I had attended the Saratoga-Potsdam Choral Institute in 1971 when this was performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Saratoga Springs during their summer season at SPAC. I was only 21 so it wouldn't have hit me then the way it does now but I know I would have connected with it on a deep emotional level just the same. I always tear up at the end without fail! ♥♥♥

NJI've had the great privilege of hearing Sibelius' 7th for the first time ever, live in New York. I was sobbing in the second movement and by the end was so emotionally moved, my best friend at the time asked if i needed to leave. Needless to say i loved it. Bruckner's 4th is also a wonderful piece with a fantastic ending (when not taken too slowly imo) that one can easily be stretched far too long to me. Blomstedt's rendition is one of my favorites

I have always loved the sheer, unadulterated wildness at the end of Prokofiev’s 5th….

These composers were absolute GIANTS of their time! These works are just colossal! Awesome video! :)

Great sampling of epic moments in symphonic music. As a fan of symphonic movie scores, this was like a greatest hits album! Thanks for your work.

Fantastic, thank you. I just subscribed. I'm a bit of a fan of the finale of the Tchaikovsky 5th, the Shostakovich 5th and Saint Saens 3rd

Thank you so much for remember me how great, and glorious it is these pieces, and give me some motivation to write something here, thanks guys for this incredible work!!

Dvorak's 9th is spectacular!

Excellent work!... Thank you!

How can you leave out Saint-Saen’s 3rd symphony? Cymbals, trumpet, percussion and organ full blast?

Fantastic video guys! Keep at it, looking forward to more classical music education. There's so many to choose from, Jupiter and William Tell are a couple of my faves. Love all of these too, particularly Dvorak 9. 🙌

The Mahler 2nd and the Bruckner 4th are two of my favorite.

Very nice list. One of my favorites is Sibelius' 2nd. Very triumphant.

Thanks for explaining why the pieces are so epiiic! I really wouldn't have gotten it otherwise. Really helpful!

Sorry but Mahlers 8th Symphony's finale tops everything!

This is not just a video, it is a work of art! Bravo!

Okay but Prokofiev's fifth's ending hit me like a bus the first time I heard it. It had the same effect on me as did The Rite of Spring's final chord- it scared the bejeezus outta me 😂

My first hearing of Mahler's second was the epic recording by the Utah Symphony on Cardinal records. It became the demo recording for high end audio equipment of the day. It is an ethereal experience.

I once played the finale to mahlers symphony 2 with nearly 100 low brass (mostly trombone). The video is on yiutube if you search penn state trombone mahler. It may sincerely be the most epic thing ive been a part of

Wonderful collection. Nothing tops Mahler. It has taken over a century for his monumental works to receive their rightful renown. He to me is the king of the symphonists.

Not many codas of RVW are triumphant but the ending of the Fifth with glistening strings and total serenity is in its own way triumphant.

In that clip of Mahler's 2nd, is Alondra de la Parra conducting, proudly mexican. I got the chance to be in two amazing performances of her conducting Mahler's 5th and 2th with the Jalisco Philharmonic at Guadalajara. Such an amazing conductor. Clap, clap, clap.

Enjoyable. Good selection.

I miss the end of the Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique.

Loved this video, editing, narrators, music, everything ❤️

It is refreshing that you didn't include Beethoven's 9th. Arguably it is the most epic, but it has already won enough glory.

Before anyone comments "stop talking over the music", we have a version without the voiceover here! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QsKYqLEJbnE.htmlsi=UPrJyiW3VcuUUdjn

Good selection!

I would mention Beethoven's 5th for the number of endings that are done one after the other.

You have a similar taste of epicness as I do ^^ Love it!

This is really a tough one, because there are so many symphonies in the repertoire, and so many great things to discover. Some quiet endings are great, some raucus endings are great. Let me think of a few that come to mind on the top of my head. I'm sure on another day I would come up with different ones, I know so many: Haydn: No. 104 Just a great bookend to his gigantic symphonic body of work. The entire finale is just so much fun. Beethoven: No. 7 If that one doesn't send you dancing off into the night, then something is either wrong with the performance or you. Schubert: Great C Major (however you want to Number it. 8 is probably correct, 7 if you only count the finished ones). The Coda has to be one of the greatest things ever. Berlioz: Symphony fantastique The composer never reached that kind of intensity again. Schumann: No. 2 What a triumph after all that turmoil saying: "Music saved my life". Mahler: No. 6 Staring down the abyss in total defeat. Stanford: No. 5 A perfect illustration of the text that inspired it: "There let the pealing organ blow [...] dissolve me into exctasies and bring all Heaven before mine eyes." Gliere: No. 3 Another illustrative piece that ends with the hero of the story being petrified and his life flashing before his eyes until he finally is completely stone, unable to move just as at the start of the Symphony. And so the music recaps all movements over an organ point that symbolizes the petrification and ends with the music that opened the symphony. Bruckner: No. 5 The Finale itself is a tough nut to crack, but the Coda, if done right, just soars with an exctasy that Bruckner never reached again. Saint-Saens: No. 3 Quite literally pulling out all the stops. That's 10 for starters and one as a bonus: The Shostakovich ones you picked would also have been my picks, but I will add No. 4 as an example of false triumph ending in nothing but doubt and fear.

So many treasured finales. Let’s not forget the grand fugues employed in Mozart 41 and Bruckner 5.

I just love the silent finish of Schubert's eighth symphony..

shostakovich's 11th symphony is a masterpiece beginning to end. listen to it if you haven't. Very worth your time.

Nice lineup! My personal favorites would also include the finales of Shostakovich's 5th and Kalinnikov's 1st

In tears. So glorious. Joyful! Soul stirring.

I always repeat one of the most poignant musical memories I have is listening to Mahler's 2nd for the first time. I was writing an essay in the library and decided to just try Mahler cus I'd heard of him but never really heard anything by him other than the adagio from the 5th. I put the 2nd on from the beginning and basically wasn't really listening, more focused on writing until the choral section near the end began and I literally just had to stop for a second and contemplate what in the godly shit I was hearing. From that section I was completely spell bound though to the end just sitting in the library trying not to make it obvious I was tearing up.

Great video! For me, the ending to Brahms 1 is one of the greatest endings in symphonic history.

I've performed most of these in the past year. Absolutely magnificent symphonies. I hope to play shostakovich 10 soon. I've never heard his 11th, but it shounds amazing!

Thank you!

The ending of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony should have taken first place on this list. That ending actually makes the de jure ending of the work anticlimactic. The performance by Bernstein and the NYP, parenthetically, is the epitome of everything inspirational about classical music, in my view. A very interesting topic, thanks for posting!

The finale of Shostakovich's No.11 makes my hair stand on end.

Thanks. Copland's Third Symphony.

The conclusion of Turangalila Symphony has always and WILL always be one of my favorite climaxes to a piece. Just off of the sheer sound of what you hear and the color of what Messiaen puts on display with unusual sounds is amazing to me.

All your choices are loud, grand, and bombastic. That's not the only way to end a symphony. Two symphonies with equally great, but very different, endings are Mozart's Jupiter symphony and Vaughan Williams's 5th. The Mozart ends in a coda in which 5 themes from movement are played on top of each other in an amazing display of mastery of counterpoint. The Vaughan Williams ends in a coda that has a paradoxical feeling of ecstatic calm, the complete antithesis of the loud and bombastic endings in this video.

It's a need to have the second part of this compilation of the best symphonies

BTW, the Brahms 2nd ending could be included in this compilation. It's exhilarating!

Berlioz' "Symphonie Fantastique's" finale missing here? Never thought that could be possible. But I agree with all the picks you put in here eitherway.

4:26 I've always loved this bit in Dvorak's 9th. If memory serves me right it's a DM7b5-Dm7b5 transition over a pedal of E. Such a great variation of the main theme with just the right amount of tension!

Nothing but Mahler's 2!!!! Everytime I listen this symphony I cry at the end...is just epic!!! Like being with god!!!

Excellent analysis. In the next several videos, perhaps we can have Brahms' 4th Symphony, Bruckner's 9th, Mozart's 41st Symphony (of course) and Britten's Spring Symphony? How about Elgar's 1st and 2nd Symphonies? The English can occasionally write music! Whereas Arnold Bax is Celtic, and his 2nd and 3rd symphonies are astonishing combinations of Mahlerian orchestral complexity and wild Irish Atlantic emotional and spiritual dramas! Reading the comments here, I'm sure you would have an audience for life if you devoted a video just to Mahler - his 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. No doubt your Parisian audience would delight in Honegger (Symphonie Liturgique) and Messiaen (Turangalila). Also I wouldn't restrict yourselves to final movements, but instead to any compete component. The closing passages of Brahms' 4th, first movement, for instance, are of supreme formal control and emotional power and complexity. Perhaps also symphonic compositions not necessarily in the so-called classical format? That way we can consider tone poems (hence Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, Debussy, Ravel, Respighi); ballet scores (Rimsky, Stravinsky, Copeland are obvious and foremost choices); and the scores of great opera. After all, parts of Puccini's La Boheme, Manon, Tosca and Turandot, and, of course, hours and hours of Wagner's Ring cycle and Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, are at the absolute pinnacle of writing for full orchestra. It is impossible to understand any music written (and indeed any western art form) after the Magician of Bayreuth, without studying his works. Film music! Where would contemporary, popular, high art, "film-music-dramas" (Wagner's children so to speak) be without Korngold, Bernard Herrmann, Elmer Bernstein, Miklós Rózsa, Leonard Bernstein, Goldsmith, Malcolm Arnold, that scandalous borrower John Williams, Alexandre Desplat, Hans Zimmer, etc, etc? More thanks and much love, Andrea the music fanatic.

Good job!

Ooooooo I’ve never heard the end of Tchaikovsky 4 with the accelerando. Very cool.

4:10 - Andrés Orozco-Estrada is very happy with that 5- 6 chord. 4:19. Andrés Orozco-Estrada is even happier with that perfect chord.

I'd also nominate Sibelius 2, Nielsen 4, Kalinnikov 1, and Bruckner 5.

The Bruckner 4 ending does something unique - it builds to a terrific, grand climax while for much of the time retaining a hushed, mystical ambience.

BRAVO!!!!!

Hard to select only 7 symphony endings. I quite love the selection here but my personal favorites are (in no particular order) : Beethoven's 9 (ok not very original) Mahler's 8 (although the ending of the second one is spectacular as well) Saint-Saens' 3 (my God, the mix between the orchestra and the organ) Scriabin's 1 (no as well-known as the others but what an incredible ending)

May I suggest one more? There is (or was) not a very famous composer called Beethoven, who wrote not a very famous symphony called "Coral" (his ninth symphony) that could have occupied a modest place on this "very personal youtuber selection" . Plus Schubert's "The Great", Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, etc. Anyway, a nice try. Thanks. Adrian K. (69) Argentina.

Awesome list! You should make a separate list for solemn endings.

All I can say is that these are nice, in a bombastic way. For subtle and thought provoking I myself like the ending of Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain. For bombastic, I still like Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. Something so soft and gentle about ending a piece of music with the gentle notes of a battery of cannon.

When I saw the title of this video from this new-to-me channel that I just found in in my RU-vid recommendations, I thought the winner has got to be Mahler’s Second: and there it was! The most amazing thing about that work is for me that the last five minutes gives the illusion of being an impossible, continuous ascent of the musical scale, which it actually cannot be, to a greater and greater crescendo of sound, which is also impossible: yet that’s the impression it gives. The recording I most love and always listen to is the 1980 performance by the Chicago Symphony under Sir Georg Solti. I can't imagine it being improved upon.

Those were quite good. Mahler using all those diminished chords was invigorating, inspiring.

The Russian guys lorded it over the list. I don't blame them, they were phenomenal composers. However, my own list includes the magnificent (and often loud) endings of these symphonies: Beethoven: 5, 7 and 9 Mendelssohn: 3 Brahms: 4 Nielsen: 3, 4 and 5 Sibelius: 1 and 2 Vaughan Williams: 4 Casella: 2 Atterberg: 2 and 3 Langgaard: 1 and 6 (the latter in a similar pacing like on the Chandos recording with Neeme Järvi) Hindemith: Mathis der Maler Symphony and Die Harmonie der Welt Symphony Walton: 1 Shostakovich: 7 Popov: 1 Holmboe: 8 Braga Santos: 4

Brava. Lady conductor! 🎉

I can't see how one can refer to epic Symphony endings and not mention Sibelius 5.

You missed Mozart's 41 finale... One of the most beautiful pages in musical history

Shostakovich 's Symphony 12 Finale is "for me" one of the greatest.

Mozart’s 41 Haydn’s 49 Haydn’s 104 Beethoven’s 5, 7 & 9 Schumann’s 4 Berlioz’s fantastic sphny. Brahm’s 1 & 2 Schubert’s 9 Rimski korsakov’ Scherezade

I've played violin for the past 20 years of my life (I am 26). This was a certified sob-fest. Some of the greatest 15 minutes of my life, and now I have hours more of music to listen to. Thank you.

Let' s please not forget Beethoven's 9th Symphony, which, although many may consider it a "commonplace", is ultimately a touchstone on this topic. likewise, the "organ finale" of the 3rd symphony of Saint Saëns. I also want to share with you excellent endings to symphonies by great musicians from my country: -- The Mayas' night Finale by Silvester Revueltas -- The Indian Symphony by Carlos Chavez -- "Sinfonieta" by José Pablo Moncayo Greetings from Mexico.

Prokofiev is terrifying? Common now!

Dvořák's serenade for strings finale has to be one of my favorites

2:51 the 4th ends even more spectacularly if you stay in tempo!

My favorite is definitely Shostakovich Symphony 7

Thank you everyone for engaging with this video! I am currently working on the list for the next few videos, it's looking very long! I have compiled all of your suggestions from the comments, and here it is: Atterberg Symphony No 3 Beethoven Symphony No 7 Beethoven Symphony No 9 (very popular!) Berlioz Symphony Fantastique Brahms Symphony No 1 Bruckner Symphony No 5 Bruckner Symphony No 8 Copland Symphony No 3 Gliere Symphony No 3 Haydn Symphony No 104 Janacek Sinfonietta Kalinnikov Symphony No 1 Mahler Symphony No 3 Mahler Symphony No 6 Mahler Symphony No 8 Mozart Symphony No 41 Nielsen Symphony No 4 Rachmaninoff Symphony No 2 Saint-Saens Symphony No 3 Schubert Great C Major Symphony (8/7) Schumann Symphony No 2 Shostakovich Symphony No 4 Shostakovich Symphony No 5 Sibelius Symphony No 2 Sibelius Symphony No 5 Stanford Symphony No 5 Tchaikovsky Symphony No 5 Vaughan Williams Symphony No 5 Have I forgotten any? Or does anyone have any more suggestions? Or suggestions for your favourite recordings? Also, one of my own recommendations, Reinecke 3, which will be in the video, go check it out if you are interested!

I think the Brahms 2nd deserves honourable mention for its final bars.

Although not technically a symphony (I'm not sure how you would classify this piece of music), but you should hear the end of the final part (Part III: "Meister Eckhardt and Quackie") from John Adams' Harmonielehre. Very powerful.