NOSPR / Alsop / Polish National Youth Choir / Mahler’s "Resurrection" Symphony - NOSPR

A symphony as a world in its own right, a whole separate cosmos – this is a very Mahlerian idea. A symphony is a separate entity in the metaphysical sense, yet it is simultaneously also a world oddly related to our intuition, a world in which questions very close to human existence are asked. Gustav Mahler forms the questions on our behalf: “Why are we alive? Why do we suffer? Is all this some enormous, terrible joke? – We must answer these questions somehow, if we are to live on – nay, if we are but to die! Someone who has heard this call, even if only once in their lifetime, must find an answer. And it is this answer that I give in the final movement. The second and the third movement are to serve as an interlude, the second one is a memory! A ray of sunlight, clear and cloudless, beaming from the hero’s life.”

The Resurrection title of the 2nd Symphony is not due to Mahler, and the piece is not a manifestation of Christian faith. The composer’s answer is more universalist than ecumenical in its spirit. It gives hope for a spiritual cleansing and redemption, although it is a voice coming from a human being torn by contradictions and doubt – as most of us are. It leads from ceremonies of mourning to sublime choral singing with words by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and the composer himself – a conclusion which brings hope: “Life immortal shall be given to you by Him who has called you thereto.”

Andrzej Sułek