Mahler's Second Symphony is a work that has come to symbolise hope and the promise of new life, but its gestation could not have been longer or more painful, a seemingly eternal day of judgment.

There is a curious irony that it was at the funeral of conductor Hans von Bülow, the very man whose criticism had effectively blocked its progress, that Mahler saw the light and realised he had found the solution to the piece's completion. Hearing the ethereal voices of the boys at Hamburg's Michaeliskirche intone a setting of Klopstock's ode Auferstehen (Resurrection), it came to him that these words would give him the balance to the symphony's opening movement, whose funeral rite was so weighty and forceful. It is that progress from darkness to light, death to resurrection, which characterises the symphony.

In this performance, by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under the baton of Owain Arwel Hughes, there was no great sense of the inner tension and logic creating a single unified span over the five movements, but the latter part of the symphony certainly came into its own. Hughes had chosen his choral forces judiciously and this amalgam of four Cardiff choirs together with the National Youth Choir of Wales produced a disciplined sound that brought to the finale a shining conviction, matching that of mezzo Susan Bickley's Urlaub in the fourth movement.

Bickley's singing had that quality of serene simplicity that is inspiring and uplifting. While Mahler makes the contribution of the soprano soloist (here Helen Field) brief and less emotive, it is as these two voices emerge, rising up to invoke the clamour of bells and brass in the triumphant climax, that the composer's aspiration to create something of transcendent glory is finally achieved.