Gustav Mahler is the last great symphonist of late Romanticism and a forerunner of 20th-century music. In his lifetime he was better known as a genius conductor, but true immortality was brought by his nine completed symphonies — grandiose, philosophical “universes,” each of which, in the composer's own words, “must contain a whole world.”
Mahler expanded the bounds of the symphony to unheard-of scale (the Eighth Symphony — the “Symphony of a Thousand”), introducing into it singing, folk song, irony, tragedy, and ecstasy. His music is an intense search for the meaning of life, love, faith, and reconciliation with death. Long underestimated, in the second half of the 20th century Mahler's work experienced a true renaissance and is today one of the summits of the symphonic repertoire, deeply moving listeners all over the world.
