My first Mahler 2

...Festival Hall

Once heard, never forgotten.

'Epic forces of choir and orchestra combine to perform Mahler's Symphony No. 2 - the Resurrection.

In 1894, Mahler attended the funeral of his friend, the conductor Hans von Bülow.

"The mood in which I sat there and considered the departed was altogether in the spirit of the work that was going around my head at the time", he later recalled.

That work was his Second Symphony, and when the organ struck up Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock's hymn 'The Resurrection', Mahler knew how his new symphony would end.

He created what is for many a supreme vision of human suffering, despair, hope and elation - a piece in which, Mahler said, 'you are clubbed down and then borne up to dizzy heights on angels' wings.' Southbank Centre website

London Philharmonic Orchestra with London Philharmonic Choir