London Philharmonic Orchestra

Resurrection
Van Zweden conducts Mahler’s Symphony No. 2

Mahler Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection)

Jaap van Zweden: conductor
Elizabeth Watts: soprano
Alice Coote: mezzo soprano
London Philharmonic Choir
London Philharmonic Orchestra

In 1894, Gustav Mahler attended the funeral of his friend and colleague, 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’, Mahler 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’.

Please note there will be no interval during this performance.