Prolific cultural commentator and award-winning novelist Norman Lebrecht’s new book, Why Mahler, is to be published by Faber in July, 150 years after Mahler’s birth. Lebrecht also curating a whole season of Mahler’s work on the South Bank.

Valery Gergiev’s idea of playing two Mahler symphonies in the same BBC Prom concert – the fourth before the interval and the fifth after – is a product of our special-offer times. If neon-strip retailers can accustom us to buying more than we want by pretending to give it away free, what’s to stop conductors cramming our heads with musical excess?

I can think of no obvious precedent or justification for doing two Mahler symphonies in the same concert. Mahler once performed the fourth symphony twice in the same Amsterdam concert after Willem Mengelberg advised him that the Dutch audience was reflective by nature and would appreciate the opportunity to review the work again, after an intermission drink.

On other occasions, he performed sections of two or three different works, usually some songs and a symphonic movement, but he did not (so far as I recall) ever conduct two symphonies in the same night. So what’s the point?

Well, Gergiev is a high-energy conductor who likes to perform Soviet-style Stakhanovite feats, beating all Kremlin targets and collecting his medal on the first of May. There is also an iconoclastic streak to the man, a desire to shatter western moulds and do things in his own inimitable way. He has a genuine fascination with Mahler’s personality and he is perfectly entitled to try something that never crossed the composer’s mind.

It is not, by any measure, a crass idea. There is much that appeals to me about pairing two symphonies that musicologists split into different periods of Mahler’s life – the fourth in his so-called Wunderhorn period, and the fifth in the middle span of non-vocal symphonies. Putting them together makes a nonsense of these academic categories, and I’m all in favour of that.

There is also great merit in hearing Mahler’s music sequentially. I once staged a performance in Stockholm of all ten symphonies in a day – played in the four-hand piano versions, and immensely revealing of the connective tissue in Mahler’s creative constitution. None of us who heard the set, start to finish, would ever hear Mahler again in the same way.

So, though I’m suspicious of the supermarket ethics and unconvinced by Gergiev’s hit-and-run tactics, I am really keen to hear two Mahler symphonies back to back on August 5th. Camilla Tilling is the soloist in Mahler 4 – I like that, too. See you there.

Gustav Mahler

I was in Manchester last Thursday (28th) night for what turned out to be an overwhelming performance by the Halle Orchestra under Markus Stenz of Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony, as part of their magnificent ‘Mahler in Manchester’ Series. Mahler fever is mounting as we head towards the two anniversaries – the 150th anniversary of his birth in 2010 and the centenary of his death in 2011 – and Manchester is well ahead of the pack!

Quite apart from being a long-time Mahler addict, I had two other special reasons for being there. Each Symphony in this series is being preceded by a new commission, and on Thursday it was the turn of my husband Colin (a setting for the Halle chorus of Wordsworth’s ‘Crossing the Alps’); and secondly I have just finished working with Norman Lebrecht on his new book Why Mahler?, which Faber will be publishing in July to coincide with Norman’s BBC Radio 3 documentary on Mahler. 

Why Mahler? takes the angle of Mahler’s special relevance to the present day, and I knew I had to publish it the minute I started to read it: I couldn’t put it down and it sent me rushing back to the music. Just what is it about Mahler that, as happened on Thursday in Manchester, holds a capacity audience of around 2,000 scarcely breathing for close on 90 minutes, breaking out into a frenzy of applause and a standing ovation when it’s over?

Colin, who worked with Deryck Cooke on his completion of the Tenth Symphony, was asked in the pre-concert talk what it is that makes Mahler so special for him, and he replied:

‘I’ve lived with Mahler for all of my composing life and he’s become almost part of me; for composers there are so many aspects of his music that reach out to you, for audiences there is both an emotional appeal and an extraordinary sense of drama.’

Mahler Letters

If you have never listened to Mahler then now is your chance,  don’t miss it. And then turn to Why Mahler? (available in July), and for further invaluable insights to Faber’s Gustav Mahler’s Letters to His Wife edited by Henry Louis de la Grange.