P.S.: A note on Mahler's Tenth. There are no truly satisfying "completions", but I think those who are disappointed with the ubiquitous Cooke version might find the Barshai version more agreeable. I would say the orchestration there is more in line with the "Mahlerian spirit" than any other.
Given that I almost never listen to Mahler 10 I was very surprised to find that I somehow have both the arranger's own recording and another one by Vladimir Ashkenazy. I will have to listen to them someday. Maybe next year.
Not sure about bad but it is his weakest since the Fourth (and the Third was stronger too).
The Fourth has over time become one of my very favourite Dvořák symphonies, but that is a topic for another thread.
I would rate the Ninth ahead of the Second, maybe, just since that's the one symphony I can never remember anything about; I'd probably at this point put even the First ahead of it. With all that said, the first movement of the Ninth is fine, at least as good as some other second-tier late Dvořák (The Hero's Song, etc,) as are the first six or seven minutes of the second movement.... until the cyclic references start turning up. I dunno. Maybe I'm just being unduly harsh because this was the first Dvořák piece I heard and made me write him off altogether as a composer, then I heard the other eight symphonies, the concertos, mature chamber music, symphonic poems and overtures etc, and developed an extremely high opinion of him, and then came back to the Ninth and was somehow almost offended. It's like, I expected better!
For the "great works" that have cloyed through overexposure, I've found what's most helpful is very tightly curating my own musical experiences: I rarely go to concerts, I don't listen to the radio, and almost everything I listen to comes from my music library, which I try to keep as comprehensive as possible. The ability to randomise albums/classical works for playback, and to designate smart playlists only covering the particular musical topics I'm interested in at the moment, does well at keeping my focus off the overplayed warhorses, or for that matter my personal favourites. As such, this has allowed for things like rediscovering the Beethoven symphonies long after dismissing them as overfamiliar, simply because after a few years of not hearing them, they aren't overfamiliar anymore, and etc. But I recognise that this is not how many people prefer to consume music.
