"The second movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 1 is a folk dance. The third movement is a spooky funeral march, with klezmer accents, based on the 'Frère Jacques' melody. The stormy finale begins with an alarming bang and builds to a huge climax. The symphony had a lot, maybe even too much, for 19th-century audiences to absorb. In 1899, audiences in Vienna hissed when they heard it; they were used to Brahms and Beethoven. But today, it's hard to resist the pull of a piece that begins like Mahler's First: The strings play a single note spread out over seven octaves. Mahler said it was 'like a sound of nature'."—Tom Huizenga, NPR