Mahler’s Second had the most torturous gestation of all his symphonies. It started out as a mere torso – a symphonic poem by the name of “Totenfeier” (Funeral Rites) – written around 1888 as a gloomy codicil to the First Symphony. In that initial conception, the once-victorious hero wrestles with mortality for 25 minutes or so before a final spasm and a downward scale suggesting death has had the final word.

Pooh-poohed by the conductor Hans von Bülow, Mahler left it in a drawer for five years, eventually reconceiving it as the first part of a greater structure that would culminate in the hero’s resurrection (and, indeed, in the resurrection of all things). At that point he added two ‘reminiscences’ – an elegant minuet and a scherzo that riffed on a ditty about St Anthony preaching to the fishes – and “Urlicht”, a previously composed song for mezzo-soprano about mankind returning to God. Even then Mahler waited another year wondering how to finish it all off before inspiration struck (ironically at Bülow’s funeral) in the...