"The world premiere of Gustav Mahler's Eighth Symphony in Munich in 1910 was the artistic breakthrough for which the composer had yearned all his life, filling Munich's huge Neue Musik-Festhalle on two successive evenings to rapturous and tumultuous applause. Representatives of many European royal houses were in attendance, along with luminaries of literary and musical world. Also in attendance were Alma Mahler, the composer's young wife, and Alma's...

More than many other composers, Gustav Mahler's works are highly personal expressions of his inner world, a world of overwhelming alienation and loneliness - "thrice homeless," in his own words, "as a Bohemian in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, as a Jew throughout the world - everywhere an intruder, never welcomed." Incredibly, Mahler was able to draw upon the diversity of this world that offered him no true home, as well as his often tortured...