Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection

Presented by the Bard College Conservatory of Music

Members of The Orchestra Now join the Bard Conservatory Orchestra in this performance of Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony, which he composed over the span of nearly seven years emerged as one of his most powerful and successful compositions. When he began writing it in 1888, at age 28, he had no idea of the overall structure or how it would end; the process of discovery—and self-discovery—that unfolded during this time pondering issues no less weighty than the meaning of life and death. The conclusion was a particular problem and the solution proved something of a revelation: a choral finale setting the “Resurrection” poem by the 18th-century German writer Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, which Mahler adapted with his own words. What became known as the “Resurrection” Symphony is one of the longest, most ambitious, and profoundly moving orchestral works ever composed.