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Gustav Mahler galt als größter Operndirigent seiner Zeit. Man kann sogar behaupten, dass er der erste transkontinentale Dirigentenstar war. Als Komponist aber war er bis in die 1960er-Jahre ein Fall für Spezialisten und weit davon entfernt, zum Repertoire zu gehören. Heute macht Mahler mit seinen hohen Aufführungszahlen Ludwig van Beethoven den Rang als erfolgreichster Symphoniker streitig. Was ist da passiert? Dieses Buch sucht anhand von Interviews mit den großen Mahler-Dirigenten unserer Tage nach Antworten. Zur Sprache kommt, wie Mahler in den unterschiedlichsten Ländern sein Publikum gefunden hat und wie seine Ästhetik nach und nach als Ausdruck der Befindlichkeit des modernen Menschen, seiner Sehnsüchte und Hoffnungen, verstanden wird.

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Reinhold Kubik: "The company does its work in grand style" ú Claudio Abbado: "Mahler is the bridge to the modern art" ú Daniel Barenboim: "I began to conduct Mahler out of spite" ú Herbert Blomstedt: "Mahler must have been a great man" ú Pierre Boulez: One cannot refer to the biography to explain the music" ú Riccardo Chailly: "Mahler´s ´First´ was the great emotion of my youth" ú Christoph von Dohnányi: "Mahler composed inwardly" ú Gustavo Dudamel: "Wow, Mahler!" ú Christoph Eschenbach: "Mahler is certainly the greatest symphonist ever" ú Daniele Gatti: "Mahler should be performed simply and humbly" ú Valery Gergiev: "Mahler´s ´Seventh´ made me sleepless" ú Michael Gielen: "Bernstein turned Mahler into kitsch" ú Alan Gilbert: "In New York he was kind of giving up" ú Bernard Haitink: "I always found Mahler alarming" ú Manfred Honeck: "The rubato is essential when conducting Mahler" ú Mariss Jansons: "With Mahler you have to give everything" ú Lorin Maazel: "I would never have asked him anything" ú Zubin Mehta: "I would love to ask him a thousand questions" ú Ingo Metzmacher: "Mahler is my point of reference" ú Kent Nagano: "Mahler was a pioneer - not only a radical" ú Andris Nelsons: "Mahler wanted to show the world: I have a problem!" ú Jonathan Nott: "Frozen for eternity in death" ú Sakari Oramo: "Mahler controls chaos" ú Sir Antonio Pappano: "Mahler wanted to live, that´s the whole point!" ú Josep Pons: "Mahler is more contemporary now than in 1910" ú Sir Simon Rattle: "Mahler is the reason why I´m a conductor today" ú Esa-Pekka Salonen: "Mahler embraced everything that exists" ú Michael Tilson Thomas: "Jump! Cut! Bang!" ú Franz Welser-Möst: "Mahler was like an earthquake for me" ú David Zinman: "Mahler is a universe in itself" ú Conductor´s biographies ú Gustav Mahler - short biography

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Gustav Mahler was considered one of the greatest opera conductors of his time; he could even be called the first intercontinental star conductor. But that was not the case with his music; until the 1960s his compositions were only performed by specialists, the pieces nowhere near belonging to the standard repertoire. Today, however, performances of Mahler´s music rival those of Beethoven´s in frequency, thus counting Mahler among the most successful symphonists. What happened to cause that change? This book seeks to answer that question with the aid of interviews with the great Mahler conductors of our day. The discussions range from Mahler´s reception by audiences in different countries to the way his audiences gradually came to understand his aesthetic as an expression of the modern human condition, its longings and its aspirations.

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