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'Thrilling.' John Banville, GuardianThe Eighth Symphony was going to be different from anything Mahler had ever done before: it would speak in different tones, and of a different kind of experience. The world premiere in Munich in the summer of 1910 was the artistic breakthrough for which the composer had yearned all his adult life.
Stephen Johnson recounts the symphony's far-reaching effect on composers, conductors and writers of the time. Placing Mahler within his world,
The Eighth reassesses Mahler's work in the context of the prevailing thought of his age, but also against the backdrop of that tumultuous summer, when Mahler worked desperately on his Tenth Symphony, was betrayed by his wife, and consulted Sigmund Freud. It is a story like no other.
Info autore
Stephen Johnson studied cello at the Northern School of Music, Manchester, and went on to study composition with Alexander Goehr at Leeds University. After a brief period working for BBC Radio 3 he moved into musical journalism. Since then he has broadcast frequently for BBC Radio 3, Radio 4 and World Service, with major projects including fourteen programmes about the music of Bruckner for the centenary of the composer's death (1996). He has written regularly for the Independent, the Guardian, BBC Music Magazine and Gramophone, and is the author of several books including Bruckner Remembered (Faber, 1998) and How Shostakovich Changed My Mind (Notting Hill Editions, 2018). In 2003 Johnson was voted Amazon.com Classical Music Writer of the Year. His radio documentary, Shostakovich: Journey into Light, was nominated for a Sony Award in 2007, and in 2009 his documentary Vaughan Williams: Valiant for Truth won a Sony Gold Award.
Riassunto
Placing Mahler within his world, The Eighth reassesses Mahler's work in the context of the prevailing thought of his age, but also against the backdrop of that tumultuous summer, when Mahler worked desperately on his Tenth Symphony, was betrayed by his wife, and consulted Sigmund Freud.
