Sinfonia No. 12 - Mendelssohn

Sinfonia No. 12, was the last of an extended series of “string symphonies” by Mendelssohn, all of them completed before he turned 15. The symphonies were first performed at his home as part of the regular musical soirees that graced his family’s rich cultural life.

The G minor Sinfonia owes an obvious and profound debt to the music of Bach, whose music Mendelssohn had studied under the guidance of his teacher Zelter. The work is in three movements, with ferocious extended fugues in the first and last set off by a contrasting lilting central andante.

Symphony No. 1 - Mahler

That Mahler’s first symphony now ranks among the composer’s most popular and frequently performed works is eloquent testimony to the way in which an artist’s work can, over time, effect changes in audience taste. At the time of it’s premiere in 1889, concertgoers were accustomed to “the artistic” and “the vulgar” as belonging to two totally separate spheres, and were therefore scandalized, almost morally offended, at the inclusion in the symphony of elements such as café music and the common children’s tune “Freres Jaques”

In it’s original form, the work was a symphonic poem, and even as it evolved though the course of repeated performances and revisions into a four movement symphony, it was typically presented by the composer with a written program to facilitate comprehension.
The program (in a translation by de la Grange quoted on Andante.com) is as follows: (the discarded “Blumine” movement removed)

Part I
'Memories of Youth': fruit, flower and thorn pieces
1. 'Spring goes on and on' (Introduction and Allegro comodo). 
The introduction describes nature's awakening from its long winter sleep.

2. 'Full sail' (Scherzo).

Part II
3. 'Aground!' ( A funeral march in the style of Callot).
The following will help to explain this movement: the initial inspiration for it was found by the composer in a burlesque engraving: 'The Huntsman's Funeral', well known to all Austrian children, and taken from an old book of fairy stories. The animals of the forest accompany the dead huntsman's coffin to the graveside; hares carry the pennant, then comes a band of Bohemian musicians, followed by cats, toads, crows, etc., all playing their instruments, while stags, deer, foxes and other fourlegged and feathered creatures of the forest accompany the procession with droll attitudes and gestures. This movement is intended to express a mood alternating between ironic gaiety and uncanny brooding, which is then suddenly interrupted by:

4. 'Dall'Inferno' (Allegro Furioso)
the sudden outburst of despair from a deeply wounded heart.