Symphony No. 1 in D major "Titan"

About the work

Mahler's First opens on a single sustained A — nature humming before dawn, a clarinet cuckoo calling through it. The third movement turns Frère Jacques into a minor-key funeral march interrupted by a klezmer street band, irony and grief side by side; early audiences were baffled. The finale erupts with what Mahler called a cry 'from hell to heaven'. About 55 minutes, and the best possible entry into Mahler's credo that a symphony 'must contain the whole world'.

Upcoming performances