Volume two of a contemporary monument in musical biography. More
than twenty years ago de La Grange published the first volume
(1973) of his life of composer/conductor Gustav Mahler. De La
Grange proceeded through the first 40 years of Mahler's life,
packed with creative work and emotional turmoil, on virtually a
week-by-week (sometimes day-by-day) basis, claiming that the
extraordinary length and detail of his book were necessitated by
gaps in the written record occasioned by two world wars and the
flux of national boundaries in Eastern Europe. The good news is
that the second volume - which covers Mahler's legendary opera
productions in Vienna, the anti-Semitism he battled against, his
composition of the middle-period masterpieces, and his love affair
with and marriage to Alma Schindler - is as good as, probably (by
dint of the interest of its subject matter) better than, volume
one. (The bad news is that this volume covers only the years
between 1897 and 1904 in Vienna; volume three will complete the
Vienna years, and volume four the New York years.) The approach is
once again comprehensive. Thousands of letters, newspaper articles,
and manuscript sources illuminate every corner of Mahler's life
during the seven years in question. We are told the particulars of
his favorite dessert and promised the recipe in an appendix to
volume three. Nonetheless, such minutiae are not allowed to obscure
the central fact that enabled Mahler to pursue his phenomenally
challenging dual career as composer and conductor: his unshakable
aesthetic. It is evident in every one of bis many judgments and
projects, extending from the largest compositional design to his
informed rebuke of a tenor at the Vienna opera who was trying to
worm out of singing Die Fledermaus on the grounds that light opera
was "beneath him." Against this artistic background, the complexity
of Mahler's emotional life becomes easier to comprehend. A
must-have for music libraries and all but the most superficial
Mahler-ites. (Kirkus Reviews)
In an age of artistic accomplishment, Gustav Mahler stood out as one of the supremely gifted musicians of his generation. As a composer, he won acclaim for his startling originality. As a conductor, his relentless pursuit of perfection was sometimes seen as tyrannical by the singers and musicians who came under his baton. And always, even with his greatest triumphs, he provoked controversy among the critics. Now Henry-Louis de La Grange, Mahler's celebrated biographer, offers new insight into Mahler's life and work with his latest look at the career of this musical genius.
In Mahler in Vienna, La Grange follows the great musician to the intellectual and artistic capital of turn-of-the-century Europe. From Mahler's spectacular debut as director of the Vienna Court Opera to his triumphant tour of the continent, we see him at the height of his powers. La Grange vividly portrays the marvelous spectacle, including the extraordinary range of artists who worked with Mahler--the composers Dvorak, Gustave Charpentier, Richard Strauss, Zemlinsky, and Schoenberg; the painters, architects, and decorators of the Secession (led by Klimt); and the writers Hauptmann, Dehmel, Hofmannsthal, and Schnitzler. In Vienna, the conductor worked a revolution in standards of performance and (along with Secession painter Alfred Roller) scenic illustration. It was also during this period that he wrote some of his best-loved symphonies--including his Fourth and Fifth--and his three orchestral song-cycles and collections, the Wunderhorn-, Ruckert-, and Kindertotenlieder. For each of these works La Grange provides full notes and analytic descriptions. And the author does not neglect Mahler's temptestuous personal life, for during these years he met Alma Schindler--"the most beautiful woman in Vienna." La Grange deftly captures the story of their engagement and marriage in 1902.
Mahler remains one of the greatest figures in the history f music, a man whose work provokes strong reactions today as in his own time. This account is just one part of the definitive four-volume biography Gustav Mahler, the result of a thirty-year research project; the author has personally translated it from his original French into English. Scrupulously researched and insightfully written, this volume is a brilliant account of a critical epoch in Mahler's life.
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