Summary
The fourth and final volume of Donald Mitchell’s magisterial study of Mahler and his music.

Key Points:

Donald Mitchell is the acknowledged expert on Mahler and his music.

Mahler remains one of the most recorded composers in recent years.

This volume collects a number of hard-to-find pieces on the middle and later symphonies.

£40 Hardcover
rising to £50
in January 2008

978 1 84383 345 1
20 June 2007

47 b&w illus, 736pp,
23.4cm x 15.6cm
Boydell Press

Description

This new publication fills the remaining gaps in the scrutiny of Mahler's works in the series, principally the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Symphonies, with the Ninth and Tenth. It begins with a substantial survey of Mahler's music, commissioned for the sixth edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980), but here printed in full for the first time.

A striking feature throughout this collection is the examination of the revelatory role of the performer; this is epitomized in transcripts of significant conversations about the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies with, respectively, Riccardo Chailly and Bernard Haitink. The concluding section consists of major lectures and celebratory essays, some here published for the first time in English. These form a fascinating and frequently moving personal testament to a lifetime, and specifically fifty working years, of discovering Mahler.

The Author
DONALD MITCHELL's three previous studies of Mahler are among the enduring monuments of postwar Mahler literature. He was awarded the Gustav Mahler Medal of Honour of the International Gustav Mahler Society in Vienna in 1987, and was appointed CBE in 2002