Luogo e data di registrazione		Grosser Saal, Musikverein, Vienna (Austria) - maggio/giugno 2005
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Executive Producer		Marion Thiem
	Associate Producer		Ewald Markl
	Recording Producer		Christian Gansch
	Tonmeister (Balance Engineer)		Rainer Maillard
	Recording Engineer		Wolf-Dieter Karwatky
	Recording Coordinator		Matthias Spindler
	Editing		Rainer Maillard
	Prima Edizione LP		nessuna
	Prima Edizione CD		Deutsche Grammophon - 00289 477 6004 - (1 CD) - durata 80' 36" - (p) 2006 - DDD
	Note		Cover Photo: © Harald Hoffmann

The ink was barely dry on the score of his First Symphony in 1888 when Mahler began to toy with the idea of a new large symphonic work in C minor. The opening movement was soon completed and named Todtenfeier (Funeral Ceremony), but it then languished among his papers until 1891, the year in which he left the Budapest Opera to become conductor in Hamburg. There he attracted the attention of the great conductor Hans von Bülow, well known as a champion of new music. When Mahler played him Todtenfeier on the piano, however Bülow covered his ears and groaned: "If what I have heard is music, I understand nothing about music. [...] Compared with this, Tristan is a Haydn symphony." Mahler’s creative urge survived the master’s cruel words, but the Hamburg Opera now consumed most of his time and energy, and it was not until the summer of 1893, spent near Salzburg, that he returned to the Symphony in C minor. He soon completed the Andante he had sketched five years earlier. Immediately afterwards there occurred one of the strangest episodes in his entire creative life: simultaneously and on identical musical material, he composed the song Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt and the new symphony's Scherzo. Work was progressing at a dizzying speed, but when the end of the summer came and, with it, the time for his return to Hamburg, Mahler had not yet made any sketches for a finale, though he had composed the Wunderhorn-Lied entitled Urlicht, which would serve as its introduction. What he still lacked was a text for the powerful choral ending he had in mind, something comparable to the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. In February 1894, Bülow died and Mahler attended his memorial service in Hamburg. During the ceremony he experienced a revelation when ”the choir, in the organ-loft, sang Klopstock's Resurrection Chorale. It was like a flash of lightning, and everything became plain and clear in my mind!" The initial sketches were noted down immediately on his return home from the service, and the actual composition of the finale was completed within the space of three weeks the following summer. Mahler had added a number of lines to Klopstock's ode, not only amplifying the poet’s ideas but also altering their message. As was his custom at this early stage of his career, Mahler drew up several, essentially similar programmes for the symphony. In the first movement, the ”hero" is laid in earth after a long struggle with "life and destiny". Casting a backward glance at his life, he recalls a moment of happiness (the Andante), then reflects on the cruel turmoil of human existence, in a "spirit of disbelief and negation" (the Scherzo). "He despairs of himself and of God. [...] Utter disgust for every form of existence and evolution seizes him in its iron grip, tormenting him until he utters a cry of despair." A redeeming "Urlicht" (Primeval Light) then shines from afar. "Stirring words of simple faith" in the fourth movement sound in the hero's ear, bringing a glimmer of hope. Nevertheless, a long distance still has to be travelled before the final apotheosis. The finale begins with a vision of terror: "The horror of the day of days has come upon us. The earth trembles, the graves burst open, the dead arise and march forth in endless procession. The great and the small of this earth, the kings and the beggars, the just and the godless, all press forward. The cry for mercy and forgiveness sounds fearful in our ears. The wailing becomes gradually more terrible. Our senses desert us; all consciousness dies as the Eternal Judge approaches. The Last Trump sounds; the trumpets of the Apocalypse ring out. In the eerie silence that follows, we can just barely make out a distant nightingale, a last tremulous echo of earthly life. The gentle sound of a chorus of saints and heavenly hosts is then heard: 'Rise again, yes, rise again thou wilt!' Then God in all His glory comes into sight. A wondrous light strikes us to the heart. All is quiet and blissful. Behold: there is no judgement, no sinners, no just men, neither great nor small. There is no punishment and no reward. A feeling of overwhelming love fills us with blissful knowledge and illuminates our earthly life." Unlike his First Symphony, which long remained misunderstood, Mahler’s Second took only a few years to establish itself in the concert hall. Richard Strauss arranged for a performance of the first three movements at a Philharmonic concert in Berlin in March 1895, which Mahler himself conducted, but the critics afterwards accused the young composer of shattering his listeners’ eardrums with his ”noisy and bombastic pathos” and ”atrocious, tormenting dissonances". Undeterred, Mahler organized the first performance of the complete work nine months later, again in Berlin, but this time including soloists and chorus. By the end of the evening he felt reassured by the audience's enthusiastic response, but with the next morning’s newspapers came renewed and bitter attacks. Fortunately, the blow was tempered by the enthusiasm of such distinguished admirers as the conductors Arthur Nikisch and Felix Weingartner and the composer Engelbert Humperdinck. The Munich premiüre, during the winter of 1900/01, created something of a stir, and when Mahler conducted the Second in the great Basle Cathedral in 1903, another performance organized by Strauss, the work and its composer were both ecstatically received. 1. Allegro maestoso. Mit durchaus ernstem und feierlichem Ausdruck [With deeply serious and solemn expression]. With this funeral march and the eloquence of its thematic material, the power of its architectural structures, the emotional thrust of its inspiration and its concision of thought, Mahler assumes for the first time the full stature of a symphonist in the great German tradition. The shadow of Bruckner hovers over the opening bars with a long tremolando and a first subject on the lower strings that is 43 bars long. Yet the composer’s distinctive voice asserts itself in such features as the dominant-tonic melodic intervals and the alternation between major and minor. The structure is classical, with two main subject groups, the second of which, in E major already hints at the work’s optimistic conclusion and the finale’s "Resurrection" theme. Transposed to C major, this same subject also launches the first of the movement's two development sections with a long, lyrical episode. In the second of these, a new element enters on six horns, a solemn chorale related to the Dies irae that will later play a crucial role in the final movement. 2. Andante moderato. Sehr gemächlich. Nie eilen [Very leisurely. Never hurry]. Two sections alternate in this idyllic movement, so different in style, atmosphere and scale from the first that Mahler specified their separation by a few minutes’ pause. The first section is a graceful landler in the major, the second a triplet theme in the minor. Mahler was particularly proud of the cello countermelody that accompanies the principal theme’s second exposition. 3. In ruhig fliessender Bewegung [With a gently flowing movement]. The tragic, or at least pessimistic, conception of this symphonic Scherzo seems worlds away from the humour of the Wunderhorn song in which St. Anthony preaches to the fishes, who understand nothing of his sermon and look on with a glazed expression. Yet they are sister works that use identical musical material. Two timpani strokes, dominant-tonic, unleash the Scherzo’s "senseless agitation”, an uninterrupted and intentionally monotonous double ostinato in the treble and bass. The bulk of the material in the Trio in C major is likewise borrowed from the song. At the end of the movement, the "cry of despair" alluded to in the symphony’s programme is heard in a vast B flat minor climactic tutti. 4. "Urlicht”. Sehr feierlich, aber schlicht (Choralmässig) [Primeval Light. Very solemn but simple (In the manner of a chorale)]. After the "tormenting” questions of the opening movement and the grotesque dance of the Scherzo, humankind is freed from uncertainty and doubt. The Wunderhorn-Lied brings with it the first ray of a light that will shine in glory at the end of the finale. A solemn chorale, gently stated on the brass, affirms the innocent faith of childhood; later on, an expanded version of this same ascending theme will become the final movement's ”Resurrection" theme. 5. Im Tempo des Scherzo. Wild herausfahrend. [At the same speed as the Scherzo. In a wild outburst]. The Scherzo’s "cry of despair" is recalled, then answered (Sehr zurückhaltend [Very restrained]) by a hesitant statement on the horns of the emerging "Resurrection" theme. There follows a ”voice calling in the wilderness”, again on the horns, but this time off-stage, before the contours are once again blurred by a descending triplet figure that works its way down through the orchestra. The wind chorale then heard against pizzicato quavers (eighth notes) on the strings announces some of the characteristic intervals of the "Resurrection" theme, while at the same time recalling the Dies irae motif heard in the opening movement. But the time for certainty has not yet come. A long orchestral recitative elaborates the theme of human frailty and the anxiety of God's creatures as the much-feared hour approaches. A reply comes again in the form of a chorale to which the lower brass add a note of solemnity. The heavens brighten and the return of the brass fanfare prepares for a new statement of the "Resurrection" theme, now far more assertive. This whole series of episodes is linked together in a way that follows dramatic, rather than musical, rules and constitutes a vast prelude, almost 200 bars in length. An arresting crescendo on the percussion introduces the Allegro energico, a vast symphonic free-for-all based on most of the themes already heard. A return of the "cry of despair" produces a startling effect that is one of the earliest instances of a typically 20th-century "spatialization" effect: off-stage brass repeatedly superimpose fanfare motifs on an impassioned recitative that pursues its tireless course, first in the cellos and then in the violins. The gnawing sense of anguish grows more and more insistent until the brass enter with another triumphant fanfare. Now at last, in an atmosphere of mystery and hope, the radiant ”Resurrection" theme appears in its glorious complete form, marking the beginning of the coda in which chorus, soloists and full orchestra come together in a great cry of jubilation. One would search in vain in this vast finale for the infallible organization and formal mastery of parallel movements in Mahler’s other symphonies; the form is free, more dramatic perhaps than symphonic, yet it is hard to imagine a more eloquent or suitable conclusion for this work. The Second Symphony’s apotheosis recalls those radiant "glories" that can be seen shining above Baroque altars in Austrian churches. It overwhelms and enthralls us, and puts all our doubts to rest. Henry-Louis de La Grange