Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | N | Notes

Gustav Mahler and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra Tour America.

Article Excerpt
Gustav Mahler and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra Tour America. By Mary H. Wagner. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2006. [xv, 237 p. ISBN-10 0-8108-5720-0; ISBN-13 978-0-8108-5720-9. $50.] Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.

It is rare to find a focused study that serves as a point of departure for further research, but the approach behind Gustav Mahler and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra Tour America by Mary H. Wagner offers such a perspective. In this book, Wagner explores an important aspect of the composer's career that demands the kind of scrutiny the author has undertaken. While Mahler's tours have not escaped the attention of Henry-Louis de La Grange in his multi-volume biography of the composer, the significance of Mahler's tours merits further consideration. La Grange has given due attention to Mahler's work in America (in Gustav Mahler: Chronique d'une vie, 3: Le genie foudroye 1907-1911 [Paris: Fayard, 1984] along with the immanent fourth volume of the English-language edition with Oxford University Press), and Zoltan Roman's Gustav Mahler in America (New York: Pendragon Press, 1988) contains documentary material on the composer's work with the New York Philharmonic. Another useful study is Marvin von Deck's dissertation "Gustav Mahler in New York: His Conducting Activities in New York City, 1908-1911" (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1973), which Wagner cites in her work. In the present study Wagner has gone further in assessing this single aspect of Mahler's work to reveal much about the relationship between the conductor and the orchestra, the programs that were used on the tours, the...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!