Completed in 1887, Stanford’s ‘Irish’ Symphony enjoyed immediate and widespread success, continuing to be played well into the twentieth century. The ‘Irish’ subtitle indicates its frequent deployment of folk-tunes as melodic material, although the work never strays far from the Austro-German symphonic tradition. The 1905 Sixth Symphony, by contrast, received only two hearings before succumbing to an eighty-year oblivion. The subtitle, ‘In honour of the life-work of a great artist: George Frederick Watts’, is important: Watts (1817-1904) was among the most lauded British artists of his era and Stanford’s work, if not overtly programmatic, was influenced by instances of Watt’s legacy – for example the equestrian statue in Kensington Gardens, London.