Symphony No. 2 (Mahler)

Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2, known as the Resurrection Symphony, is a large-scale work for orchestra, chorus and vocal soloists composed between 1888 and 1894 and premiered under Mahler's own direction in Berlin in 1895. Its five movements move from the funeral march of the opening, written as a response to the death of the conductor Hans von Bulow, through recollection and doubt to a choral finale setting a text on resurrection and eternal life that Mahler himself partly wrote. Requiring an enormous orchestra, an offstage brass ensemble and an organ, it is among the most ambitious symphonic works of the late Romantic era and remains one of Mahler's most frequently performed symphonies.