Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Magdalena Kožená - mezzo-soprano, Daniel Harding - conductor

The Orchestra of the National Academy of Saint Cecilia is the first Italian orchestra to dedicate itself exclusively to the symphonic repertoire. Founded in 1908, it numbers some of the most important musicians of the twentieth century among its past conductors, including Gustav Mahler, Claude Debussy, Camille Saint-Saëns, Igor Stravinsky, Jean Sibelius, Paul Hindemith, Herbert von Karajan and Claudio Abbado.

Daniel Harding became the orchestra’s new music director in October 2024. He is also music and artistic director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and holds the lifetime title of conductor laureate of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with which he has worked for over 20 years. In 2002 he was awarded the title Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. In 2012 he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

Johannes Brahms composed his Second Symphony in the summer of 1877 during a visit to Pörtschach am Wörthersee. Its composition was brief in comparison with the 21 years it took him to complete his First Symphony and the work received its premiere at the end of the same year. The pastoral mood of the symphony often invites comparisons with Beethoven’s famous Sixth Symphony, although Brahms wrote to his publisher that it was surely one of the most melancholy works he had ever written.