Norman Lebrecht

A very readable and modern examination of Gustav Mahler, his life, times and art. I was struck by Lebrecht's level of detail - I had never had him marked down as a notable Mahlerian, but obviously I wasn't paying attention - but equally I've not previously read much about Mahler that related him to contemporary Europe. And that was a glaring omission in other works, because of course I knew about anti-Semitism in 19th-Century Europe, especially in Vienna. Lebrecht not only focuses on show more Mahler's Judaism and the influence this had on his art - which is informative - but also uses this device to relate his narrative to modern times. This did cause me to raise an eyebrow when an 1892 visit to Berchtesgaden was described as "future home to Adolf Hitler and Sound of Music tourists". Surely, I thought, the Hitler reference is irrelevant given that Mahler died in 1911. Well, apparently in 1907 a teenaged Hitler did have an introduction to Alfred Roller, Mahler's production designer at the Vienna Opera, but was too intimidated to take it up. Lebrecht then relates a story about Hitler and Roller reminiscing over the Wagner productions of the time more than 25 years later, all the time managing to keep Mahler out of the conversation. All very relevant, but it hardly justifies the tagging of Berchtesgaden with Hitler earlier in the book.

And Berchtesgaden was nothing to do with The Sound of Music - that's Salzburg Lebrecht was thinking about. Admittedly, just over the mountain, but in a different country altogether. Let alone the fact that present-day Austrians have barely even heard of the musical.

A couple of other instances crop up where Lebrecht's reference to contemporary attitudes to Judaism and anti-Semitism made me pause; one was where he conflates the closing words of Das Lied von der Erde - ...ewig, ewig... ("ever and ever") with the Nazi propaganda meme of Der ewige Jude ("the eternal Jew") and appears to retrospectively link those two ideas. The second was where he refers to Herbert von Karajan as "always a Nazi" (a comment interestingly not referenced in Karajan's index entries); although Karajan's membership of the Nazi Party is an acknowledged fact, most of the musical establishment has accepted his explanation that this was for purely pragmatic reasons, and that his post-war career studiously ignored such matters. Lebrecht obviously does not accept that.

There is a lot of additional content setting Mahler's life in context, both historically (as I have already said) and geographically. There are also interesting pen portraits of some notable Mahler proponents, such as the conductor Klaus Tennstedt and ultra-fan Gilbert Kaplan. Lebrecht also has many personal reminiscences of various musical luminaries, including Anna Mahler, the composer's surviving daughter. These all add interest, though it should be noted that it's all written in the present tense so you're never quite sure if Lebrecht is describing present-day Vienna, Budapest, etc., or the same cities in Mahler's time. Writing about history in the present tense is something that makes a few people very irritated indeed, so if you are one of those people, this book may not be for you.

There is one final point. Throughout, Lebrecht cites Mahler's own contentment with interpretations of his music taking vastly different approaches to tempi, phrasing and so on. Yet in the section on available (as at publication in 2010) recordings, he can be quite scathing about conductors and interpretations whose approach he doesn't agree with.

But ultimately, this is Lebrecht's personal view. Overall, he succeeds in painting a picture of a complex composer whose work divided many opinions, though not necessarily for valid reasons. I've visited Austria on numerous occasions, and so I was able to insert myself into some of the scenes and events quite easily. And I was also struck with Lebrecht's portrait of a young man in a hurry, whose First Symphony was premièred at the age of 29, and who died in his 51st year. In the words of the dark joke usually applied to Mozart, when Mahler was my age, he'd been dead 14 years. Somehow, that thought brought the man to life from the pages of Lebrecht's book. show less

Musical Anecdotes is a well-researched collection of snippets, at most a couple of pages long, about musicans (composers, mostly)--their foibles, performances, feuds, friends, habits--arranged in chronological order. Lebrecht is a serious writer on the arts and there's quite a long list of sources appended so in no way is this one of those insubstantial collections patched together for the sake of gee-whizzes. On the other hand a reader need have only an interest in and passing knowledge of show more classical music to enjoy the book: You probably would want to know, say, adagio from allegro, Bernstein from Boulez, to appreciate it but you certainly needn't be deeply knowledgeable about classical music to enjoy the book hugely. And perhaps one reason I so liked it is that I know very little about lives of most musicians and so most of the information about them was new to me.

As soon as my memory of Musical Anecdotes becomes a fuzzy one, the book will go back to the bedside table for a re-read. In the meantime I can't resist quoting from the entries I remember most vividly, one for its (possibly contrived) pathos and one for the sort of bolshiness that makes Roland Garros crowds smileworthy:

'If no one turned up for his class at the Paris Conservatoire, he [Cesar Franck] would open the door of Massenet's classroom and ask gently, "Isn't there anyone for me?" Alternatively he would say, "Perhaps one of you gentlemen would come to my room for a minute or two to keep me company?" '

'The Orchestre Colonne refused to take La Mer seriously and its conductor, Camille Chevillard, had to plead with the players not to argue over every bar. Pierre Monteux, first viola, says the musicians were so irritated by the sounds they were making that they fabricated diversion. "One jocular fellow concocted a small boat of music paper. With a slight push of the foot, it sailed on a wooden sea, from basses through the 'celli and violas, the length of the platform. This childish idea met with such success that there was soon a whole fleet of small ships made from all kinds of paper as Neptune, conceived by Claude Debussy, thundered his way to the end." ' show less

This book about the life and importance of Gustav Mahler is marred by a series of annoying quirks. The opening chapter set the tone, and, to be honest, after that I was always a bit distrustful of the author, a feeling that did not turn out to be unwarranted. In the first chapter, the author talks about Gorbachev’s strong reaction to Mahler (that’s important why?), then discusses how Mahler influenced Shostakovich and Schnittke without really providing any evidence and finally poses some show more questions that everyone wants to know about Mahler, such as – was he circumcised? Unfortunately, in the rest of the book, Lebrecht continues these annoying tendencies which affected my enjoyment of an interesting biography.

Most of the time, the Mahler biography is informative and engrossing. He did have a dramatic life – he was a highly-regarded conductor in Budapest, Vienna and New York and composed giant symphonies and songs about life, love and death. He experienced multiple family tragedies and married a feckless but beautiful woman who would later go on to marry Walter Gropius and Franz Werfel, evade the Nazis and survive WWII, settle in the U.S. and write some unreliable memoirs about him. Mahler had relationships with many artistic and intellectual luminaries of the day – Brahms, Richard Strauss, Klimt, Freud, Schoenberg and his students, Schnitzler, Zweig, Hofmannsthal, Mann. Lebrecht vividly portrays his workaholic nature and the many obstacles that he had to overcome (multiple physical ailments, unrelenting anti-Semitism).

However, there were annoyances even in the biographical section. Sometimes, Lebrecht would insert himself – saying, I know what he felt like because… The random anecdotes about people being affected by Mahler (which could be interesting, but were mostly just short distractions and didn’t provide evidence to support the idea that Mahler changed the world) were placed throughout the book. Lebrecht also speculates a bit too much on how various childhood incidents affected Mahler’s music and includes Freudian analyses of motives that felt like a reach. At times, he is too eager to bash Mahler’s detractors, though some were clearly anti-Semitic and one newspaper critic did appear to be out to get Mahler. The biography was written in the present tense which was just weird especially as all the anecdotes about people affected by Mahler’s music were written in past tense. Lebrecht inserts descriptions of going to places where Mahler lived which pretty much added nothing. He also likes to describe his friendships with famous people or people who were close to Mahler, going on about how he and Anna Mahler, Mahler’s daughter, could talk about anything and everything and calling Leonard Bernstein “Lenny”.

Lebrecht describes the genesis of Mahler’s symphonies and songs. He provides meanings for the music, sometimes taken from Mahler’s notes, sometimes quoting critics or friends of Mahler and sometimes just going off on what he feels about the music. Some of the descriptions of Mahler’s music made me want to go listen to it but other times Lebrecht’s conclusions felt like massive stretches to me (Mahler anticipates IVF? The internet?) There are some analyses of Mahler’s music and influences that are well-supported, such as his effect on the Second Viennese School (Lebrecht includes quotes from Schoenberg and describes his meetings with Mahler, quotes from other people’s analyses and notes musical references to Mahler in their pieces) and the meaning of the Second Symphony (here he provides a range of opinions from different critics and some of the evidence – is it a Christian, Jewish or an atheistic work?).

In the second part of the book, Lebrecht provides an overview of the recordings of Mahler’s work, pieces by other composers that show his influence and portrayals in popular culture. This section was interesting and helpful though it depends on how much Mahler-exploring you want to do. In the end, I don’t think Lebrecht answers the question Why Mahler? or shows how Mahler is crucial to understanding civilization and relationships. Multiple personal stories don’t add up to influence or world-change – I’m sure you could find stories like that about almost any composer. I also seriously doubted Lebrecht’s assertion that no one before Mahler had used irony in their music or fast mood changes or multiple meanings at one time. Mahler was a famous conductor of the screaming dictator type and I wondered if his influence had extended from that, but though some of his students went on to also be famous conductors, Lebrecht never examines that. In fact, he laments that no conductors of the Vienna orchestra were ever as good as Mahler and that Vienna had forgotten Mahler. He mentions in one sentence that Mahler invented the subscription series for concerts which I think would be interesting if true but then moves on and doesn’t talk about this. Lebrecht briefly challenges the assertion that Mahler’s music was forgotten after his death and revived mid-century by some conductors – I wish he would have gone into more detail on this or provided statistics of some sort. It probably sounds like I hated this book but I didn’t – I would just recommend another biography. show less

Lebrecht's overview of Mahler's life is educational, eye-opening, and for a Mahler-nerd, could probably be considered a must-read. This being said, the author's tendency to jump around in timelines and his propensity to name-drop makes it a difficult read at times. Truly the nerdiest and most challenging section to read is the end where he goes through an exhausting list of recordings, categorized by piece, and gives every single reason why each is good, bad, sub-standard, past-prime, show more wonderful, or just is. It's a whirlwind of names and run-on sentences that the nerd in me wanted to be able to experience but found truly exhausting. I was very happy, though, to be able to weed through the jungle of recordings to find many of the ones that I own and found that the author's love or hate matched my own feelings and for the same reasons. The redeemable takeaway from this Mahler-esqe section was seeing the different, but consistent, approaches certain conductors take when taking up Mahler (e.g., Walter, Klemperer, and Bernstein) which will most definitely impact my purchasing decisions in the future. show less