Symphony No. 2 in c-minor, Resurrection
Sometimes concertgoers just want spectacle, and Mahler certainly delivered that with his Symphony No. 2, the Resurrection. While several of his other offerings baffled the public and critics alike, this symphony would become one of Mahler's most popular in his lifetime. Mahler began it as a symphonic poem (Totenfeier), added two more? movements 5 years later, and then was stymied. He knew he wanted a choral finale, but what text? What would work? A year later, when Mahler attended the funeral of the great conductor Hans von Bulow and heard Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock's hymn, Die Auferstehung (The Resurrection),? he knew he had his answer. He took two of Klopstock's verses, added some of his own, dropped in an earlier song, Urlicht, and his masterpiece was complete. It is a work that has taken audiences on a journey from dark to light for over a century.
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