Symphony No. 1 in D major "Titan"

Mahler's First Symphony (1888, revised 1896) is the work in which one of music's most original voices announces itself fully formed: vast ambition, radical juxtaposition of the sublime and the grotesque, an astonishing range of emotional register from naïve nature poetry to shattering existential crisis. The opening movement's famous long-held A in seven octaves, from which life seems to gradually coalesce, is one of the most atmospheric beginnings in the symphonic literature. The third movement's ironic funeral march, built on the children's song 'Frère Jacques' in minor with a klezmer-style countermelody, was utterly unprecedented in the concert hall. The finale erupts in cataclysm and must fight its way through darkness to the triumphant D major close — a battle demanding everything from the orchestra. The symphony requires unusually large forces including seven horns and strongly characterised woodwind soloists.