Gustav Mahler
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Jens Malte Fischer; Translated by Stewart Spencer
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The definitive biography of the celebrated composer Gustav Mahler
"Superb...A passionate book in which Gustav Mahler emerges as a true genius.”—Ralph Collier, Quarter Notes
A best seller when first published in Germany, Jens Malte Fischer's Gustav Mahler has been lauded by scholars as a landmark work. He draws on important primary resources—some unavailable to previous biographers—and sets in narrative context the extensive correspondence between Mahler and his wife, Alma; Alma Mahler's diaries; and the memoirs of Natalie Bauer-Lechner, a viola player and close friend of Mahler, whose private journals provide insight into the composer's personal and professional lives and his creative process.
Fischer explores Mahler's early life, his relationship to literature, his achievements as a conductor in Vienna and New York, his unhappy marriage, and his work with the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic in his later years. He also illustrates why Mahler is a prime example of artistic idealism worn down by Austrian anti-Semitism and American commercialism. Gustav Mahler is the best-sourced and most balanced biography available about the composer, a nuanced and intriguing portrait of his dramatic life set against the backdrop of early 20th century America and fin de siècle Europe.
Jens Malte Fischer is professor of the history of theater at the University of Munich. Stewart Spencer is an acclaimed translator whose work includes biographies of Richard Wagner, Cosima Wagner, and W.A. Mozart, all published by Yale University Press.
"[A] superb, multi-faceted biography. . . . Fischer's superb study does full justice to the complexity of its subject."—Adam Lively, The Sunday Times
“…….a formidable read….Fischer’s canny handling of the latest Mahlerian scholarship is likely to remain the best one-volume treatment of its inexhaustible subject.”—Bayan Northcott, BBC Music Magazine
“Much more than a biography. . . . It is a portrait of an entire epoch.”—Hans Rudolf Vaget, Smith College
“superb life of Mahler that unpicks his struggles with his wife and Viennese anti-semitism”—The Sunday Times Culture
‘Fischer’s approach is measured and meticulous, lucid in its analysis of Mahler’s music and personality, and astute in its picture of the social and historical contexts that shaped them.’—Rupert Christiansen, Daily Telegraph
"Mahlerians will welcome this important work for its synthesis of new and old data within a bold, passionately argued study . . . [Fischer's] biography may be the most rewarding way to appreciate Mahler and his resonant art."—Jeffery S. McMillan, Opera News
Publication Date: August 9, 2011
16 b/w illus.
