Joan Tower's first major orchestral work, Sequoia, from 1981, opens with the boom of a massive gong and a fusillade of deafening cowbells. Like the statuesque redwoods of the title, the music looms ...

For the past two centuries, composers, academics and fans of classical music have puzzled over Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8, which he abandoned in 1822 after writing the first two movements. Why ...