Paperback Q&A: Norman Lebrecht on Why Mahler?

The author explains how he came to abandon a conventional biography of the composer in favour of a 'club DJ' approach 'with lots of fast-forward and rewind'How did you come to write Why Mahler?I had been struggling with the question for most of my adult life. Why, I wondered, was a composer, derided when alive and discarded for decades, displacing Beethoven at the heart of symphonic culture?Why Mahler? Born 1860, died 1911, it struck me on first hearing his music in the 1970s that Gustav Mahler ...

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