Conductor composer and writer Bruno Walter (1876 1962) worked closely with Gustav Mahler as the composer's assistant and protégé. His revealing recollections of Mahler were written in 1936 marking the twenty-fifthanniversary of the composer's death. Walter first encountered Mahler more than 40 years earlier when he served as the composer's assistant conductor in Hamburg. He worked with Mahler again at the Vienna Opera and after thecomposer's death conducted the debut of the Ninth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde.A staunch supporter of Mahler's genius and defender of his dour personality Walter cites the pressures faced by a gifted artist striving forperfection. This edition of his tribute to his friend and mentor features supplemental materials that include a biographical sketch of Mahler as man and artist by Ernst Krenek the composer's son-in-law and musical heir and a newIntroduction by Erik Ryding author of Bruno Walter: A World Elsewhere.Reprint of Greystone Press Inc. New York 1941 edition.

Few composers since the mid-twentieth century have escaped Mahler's influence. This book is the first discussion of Mahler's ten completed symphonies to offer music lovers a comprehensive overview of the music as it strikes today's listeners. The book caters to the novice as well as the expert as David Hurwitz describes what the listener will hear section by section. He explains how each work is arranged how the various parts relate to one another and how one work leads to the next. The emphasis throughout is on the experience of listening and how each symphony embodies Mahler's dictum that the symphony 'must embrace the world. It must contain everything'. Hurwitz describes the emotional extravagance that lies at the root of Mahler's popularity the consistency of his symphonic thinking and his dazzling and revolutionary use of orchestral instruments to create an expressive musical language that is varied in content and immediate in impact.