Which sounds more interesting, more intriguing, more attractive – Haydn’s Symphony No.94 in G (H. 1/94) or ‘The Surprise’? Mozart’s Symphony No.41 in C K.551 or ‘Jupiter’? Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No.14 in C-sharp minor Op.27 No.2 or ‘Moonlight Sonata’? It is an established fact that if the performance of a musical composition is advertised with its colourful subtitle, more tickets will be sold. And it is not always the composer who has provided the subtitle – in many instances the accretion of a nickname has been added in later centuries. In this series, Michael Lankester investigates the phenomenon of ‘named’ compositions.

1. Brahms Tragic Overture and Mahler Symphony No.6 The Tragic

1. Beethovern Piano Sonata No.8 in C-minor Pathetique & Tchaikowsky Symphony No.6 Pathetique

3. Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony & Howard Hanson Sea Symphony

4. Sibelius String Quartet Intimate Voices & Gorecki Symphony of Sorrowful Songs

5. Schubert String Quartet Death and the Maiden & Granados The Maiden and the Nightingale

6. Dvorak The Bells of Zlonice & Rachmaninov The Bells

7. Beethoven Symphony No.6 Pastoral and Vaughan Williams Symphony No.3 Pastoral Symphony

8. Dvorak Symphony No.9 New World and Bernstein Symphony No.1 Age of Anxiety

9. Mendelssohn Symphony No.5 Reformation & Mahler Symphony No.2 Resurrection