Why Mahler?

In his own lifetime, Gustav Mahler was a celebrated conductor whose massive symphonic works were tolerated with barely veiled embarrassment by the musical cognoscenti. Norman Lebrecht explains why they were wrong, and how Mahler's musical imagination has informed and changed our culture in the century since his death.

May 24: Carson McCullers's The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Works was published on this day in 1951. Included in this omnibus edition were most of the pieces upon which her reputation now stands, putting her in a rank…

Do you recall the tagline from the very first Superman movie? "You'll believe a man can fly!" Well, I'm tempted to craft such a hyperbolic assertion for China Miéville's…

advertisement