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How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World
Pantheon
October 2010
On Sale: October 12, 2010
366 pages
ISBN: 0375423818
EAN: 9780375423819
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
Although Gustav Mahler was a famous conductor in Vienna and New York, the music that he wrote was condemned during his lifetime and for many years after his death in 1911. βPages of dreary emptiness,β sniffed a leading American conductor. Yet today, almost one hundred years later, Mahler has displaced Beethoven as a box-office draw and exerts a unique influence on both popular music and film scores. Mahlerβs coming-of-age began with such 1960s phenomena as Leonard Bernsteinβs boxed set of his symphonies and Luchino Viscontiβs film Death in Venice, which used Mahlerβs music in its sound track. But that was just the first in a series of waves that established Mahler not just as a great composer but also as an oracle with a personal message for every listener. There are now almost two thousand recordings of his music, which has become an irresistible launchpad for young maestros such as Gustavo Dudamel. Why Mahler? Why does his music affect us in the way it does? Norman Lebrecht, one of the worldβs most widely read cultural commentators, has been wrestling obsessively with Mahler for half his life. Pacing out his every footstep from birthplace to grave, scrutinizing his manuscripts, talking to those who knew him, Lebrecht constructs a compelling new portrait of Mahler as a man who lived determinedly outside his own times. Mahler wasβalong with Picasso, Einstein, Freud, Kafka, and Joyceβa maker of our modern world. βMahler dealt with issues I could recognize,β writes Lebrecht, βwith racism, workplace chaos, social conflict, relationship breakdown, alienation, depression, and the limitations of medical knowledge.β Why Mahler? is a book that shows how music can change our lives.
 Media BuzzOn Point - October 8, 2010
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