Ernest von Dohnanyi’s Second Symphony was written during the closing years of World War II, begun during the German occupation of his native Hungary in early 1944, and finished after his flight to Vienna later that same year as Soviet troops advanced from the east. According to his wife, Dohannyi was so focused on the composition of this work, that on one occasion she had to tear him away from his desk to seek shelter during an Allied air raid.

Dohnanyi was wrongly accused of being a Nazi sympathizer, even though he had resigned from the Liszt Music Academy and disbanded the Budapest Philharmonic rather than dismiss any Jewish musicians. His strong anti-Soviet views also made him persona non grata with the post-war Communist government in Hungary. Dohnanyi eventually found a new home in America, where he taught at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He and his wife became American citizens in 1955.

Dohnanyi’s Second Symphony received its first performance by a semi-professional orchestra in London in 1948, but he revised it substantially for its American premiere on today’s date in 1957 by the Minneapolis Symphony under Antal Dorati. In its final movement, Dohnanyi quotes the Bach chorale, “Komm, Susser Tod” (Come, Sweet Death), and in program notes for the Minneapolis performance, quotes the Hungarian playwright Imre Madach: “The goal is death. Life is a struggle.”