1895 first complete performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 ‘Resurrection’, by Berlin Philharmonic with the composer conducting; in the original program for the work (later withdrawn), the first movement represents a funeral and asks questions such as "Is there life after death?"; the second movement is a remembrance of happy times in the life of the deceased; the third movement presents a view of life as meaningless activity; the fourth movement is a wish for release from that life; and the fifth movement—after a return of the doubts of the third movement and the questions of the first—ends with a fervent hope for everlasting, transcendent renewal.
1913 premiere of Rachmaninoff’s choral symphonic poem The Bells in St. Petersburg with the composer conducting; text from the poem of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe, very freely translated into Russian by the symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont; one of the composer’s favorite works; dedicated to Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra.
1928 first performance of George Gershwin's An American in Paris, at Carnegie Hall, by the New York Philharmonic, Walter Damrosch conducting; scored for a standard orchestra plus celesta, saxophones, and Parisian taxi horns which Gershwin had brought back from France; composer collaborated on the original program notes with critic and composer Deems Taylor: "My purpose here is to portray the impression of an American visitor in Paris as he strolls about the city and listens to various street noises and absorbs the French atmosphere."
1930 first performance of Igor Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, in Brussels; commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra; the composer said, “It is not a symphony in which I have included Psalms to be sung. On the contrary, it is the singing of the Psalms that I am symphonizing.”