Oskar Morawetz' second symphony was commissioned by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1959 through a special grant given by the Canada Council. It was the first work ever commissioned by this orchestra and the première took place February 2nd, 1960 under the baton of Walter Susskind. It was extremely well received and a number of further performances took place. It was also recorded on disc by the International Service of the CBC for world wide distribution.

The Symphony consists of two movements which are joined without a break. The first movement is in ternary form: Adagio-Allegro-Adagio. The work opens with a two bar motive which contains four omnious strokes of the timpani playing the interval of a diminished fifth, followed by a contrasting melodic line in the muted strings and brass. The music continues with other expressive ideas in the violins and pastoral themes in the flute and oboe. At the conclusion of the Adagio, the opening bars reappear in a particularly mysterious colour. Suddenly the soft chords are interrupted by an incisive Allegro in 3/4 time or strongly rhythmical character; it is based almost exclusively on the thematic material of the Adagio, but the excited mood, with great rhythmical and dynamic contrasts steadily grows in dramatic tension until it reaches a powerful climax. There, after an almost desperate outcry of the first motive, the orchestra quickly subsides in volume and leads back to the slow Adagio where we hear again many of the themes of the beginning; but this time they sound all without the original tension, but rather resigned, remote, almost like from a great distance.

The structure of the second movement could be described as a very free sonata form. The first group of themes contains playful triplets in the woodwinds, followed by rhythmical ideas in the violins. The second theme is introduced in a much slower tempo by an oboe, surrounded by high soft sustained chords in the strings. Later the violins take over the oboe theme in a slightly extended statement. The development section is based mostly on the playful triplets of the beginning of this movement. The soft mood is interrupted only towards the end when a quickly rising crescendo is heard just before the "recapitulation". The word recapitulation has to be understood very freely, as the mood is quite different than when heard the first time. It is more of a lyrical character, in a new orchestral colour and also shorter, due to a very ingenious and interesting combination of the first and second theme. The final section, the "coda", starts with a very fast Allegro molto in the woodwinds related to the opening triplet figure. Towards the end the tempo gradually slows down and ends with rich, solemn harmonies in the brass instruments, surrounded by the rest of the orchestra.