Dvořák’s final symphony, with its famous Largo, is one of classical music’s best loved works. Tom Service separates its facts from its fictions

Forget, first of all, its mis-translated moniker. Tchaikovsky’s final symphony might be about death, but it’s the piece he termed ‘the best thing I have composed’ and is a confident and supremely energetic work

The most innovative symphony of the 19th century was born from diabolical passions

The word “pastoral” disguises the true intentions of Vaughan Williams’s third symphony, which confronted the horrors of the first world war

The story of the dedication of Beethoven’s Third is the stuff of symphonic legend. Whatever the truth, the victory at the end of the piece doesn’t just stand for Napoleon, or Beethoven, but for the possibilities of the symphony itself

It's usual to interpret Mahler's last completed symphony as a prefiguring of his death. But different conductors make the work mean very different things

Beethoven's Pastoral is no musical cul-de-sac, writes Tom Service. It's a radical work, and in its final movement is music more purely spine-tingling and life-enhancingly joyful than almost anywhere else in his output

In the first of 10 symphony guides to coincide with performances at this year's Proms, Tom Service looks at the triumphs, tragedies and controversies of Mahler's Sixth Symphony.

Symphony guide: Knussen's third symphony is only 15 minutes in length but it covers a massive musical and emotional spectrum

Liszt's Faust Symphony blows the bogus symphonic vs programme music debate out of the water

Farrenc’s symphony is as impressively energetic and structurally satisfying as any of Mendelssohn’s or Schumann’s symphonies – so does that make it “male” or “female”? Who cares? Enjoy getting to know this shamefully neglected work, writes Tom Service

Schubert's ninth symphony quotes Beethoven's own ninth. An homage - ironic or not - or his own statement of grand symphonic intent? Tom Service unpicks Schubert's great, and final symphony

This most convincing of post-tonal symphonies, can we hear Lutosławski's work as a protest piece? One thing is certain: the more you enter its symphonic labyrinth, the more you’ll discover.

Bruckner's "saucy" sixth is the symphony that disproves those lazy received opinions about his music

Mozart's 41st symphony - the last he composed - is full of postmodernism, palimpsests, and pure exhilaration

With its military bands, dazzling fanfares, and cinematic jump-cuts, Janáček's Sinfonietta is a unique symphonic proposition, sounding as new now as it did at its premiere in 1926.

This symphony might a reliable and over-familiar staple on concert programmes, but listen to it with fresh ears. It contains some of the darkest and deepest music in the 19th century, writes Tom Service

The 18-year-old composer's 29th symphony in A major might not have changed musical history, but it changed Tom Service's life.