Details
Royal Festival Hall
Southbank Centre
Belvedere Rd
London
SE1 8XX
England
Programme
Gustav Mahler – Symphony no.2 in C minor 'Resurrection'
Performers
Jaap van Zweden – Conductor
Elizabeth Watts – soprano
Alice Coote – mezzo-soprano
London Philharmonic Orchestra
London Philharmonic Choir
Programme Note
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'.
Please note there will be no interval during this performance.