Gustav Mahler: Volume 2. Vienna: The Years of Challenge (1897-1904)

Gustav Mahler was one of the supremely gifted musicians of his generation. His contemporaries came to know him as a composer of startling originality whose greatest successes with the public never failed to provoke controversy among the critics. As a conductor, his relentless pursuit of perfection was sometimes viewed as tyrannical by the singers and musicians who came under his baton.

This is the second volume of de La Grange's monumental study of the life and music of Gustav Mahler. Thirty years of research and a vast array of documentary material are here co-ordinated into the definitive study of this supremely gifted musician. The volume chronicles Mahler's triumphant début as director of the Vienna Court Opera, his stormy and brief engagement as conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic Concerts, and his tempestuous marriage with Alma Schindler. It also discusses many popular works he wrote in this period: the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, and the Wunderhorn-, Rückert-, and Kindertotenleider.