Why Mahler?

August 23, 2010
Since the early 1970s, culture commentator Lebrecht (Who Killed Classical Music?) has pursued all things Gustav Mahler: his music, his genius, his problems (from depression to racism). More comprehensive than his 1987 work, Mahler Remembered, this second look at the Austrian composer and conductor adds memoir and meditation to musical analysis for a compelling, opinionated, sometimes overwrought narrative. Noting Mahler's wide-ranging influence today (examples include Leonard Bernstein, a Harry Potter movie, and even Pink Floyd), Lebrecht finds in Mahler "a maker of music that interacts with what musicians and listeners are feeling in a fast-changing often threatening world." Throughout, Lebrecht interrupts the text with personal commentary, while being careful to connect the dots linking events in Mahler's life to his musical oeuvre and its realization. In chapters entitled "Whose Mahler?" and "How to Mahler" Lebrecht not only tells readers what to listen to, but why. Occasionally, such fervent admiration leads to fevered prose, as when Lebrecht writes that "the music pulses from him like blood from a severed artery." With more to appreciate than abhor, Lebrecht's affectionate study, like its subject, is laborious but engaging.