An agent for change

GUSTAV Mahler has had many champions since his death in 1911, from conductors Bruno Walter through Leonard Bernstein right up to today and the likes of Claudio Abbado.

We are not short of recordings (and what glee Norman Lebrecht takes in playing god in reviewing a whole plethora of them) nor are we short of knights for the Mahler cause in the brilliantly illuminating work of Donald Mitchell and the encyclopaedic and forensic work of Henry-Louis de La Grange.

Lebrecht is something of an English institution in the field of music commentary. He has his own BBC radio show, as well as a weekly syndicated newspaper column. Mahler Remembered (Faber), Lebrecht’s 2001 anthology of reminiscences by people who knew Mahler, is a very fine reference work.