Gustav Mahler

It is sad that the long-awaited revised first part of La Grange’s mighty Mahler biography, newly complete in four volumes, should have had to be posthumously finished and edited by his assistant Sybille Werner. Born in 1924, the seemingly indefatigable author died in 2017 at the age of 93. Some may seek more information than Werner supplies in her succinct Introduction about what and how much she actually had to contribute, but I am bound to say that the volume was well worth waiting for. It is a significant achievement—and it was always clear that La Grange relied upon as wide a range of collaborators and researchers as printed sources in compiling his other volumes. The new book is quite an impressive object. It is somewhat taller and wider than the three previous Oxford University Press volumes (vols. 2–4), which matched the proportions of the original Mahler. Volume One of...

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