How Late It Was, How Late: David Matthews takes issue with a survey of late Romanticism in thrall to the academy

Review of Peter Franklin, Reclaiming Late-Romantic Music: Singing Devils and Distant Sounds (University of California Press, 2014).

November 2016, Volume 10, Number 3, 91–4.

I began this review shortly after attending a superb performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony at the Royal Albert Hall, conducted by Vasily Petrenko. As always, I was overwhelmed by the music’s emotional power, its visionary splendour. I felt that everyone in the audience may have had a similar experience: there are good reasons why Mahler has become the composer for our time. For Mahler is unafraid to face the great questions of life and death and to provide answers that may not ultimately convince us – they did not ultimately convince him – yet, in our own time of relentless triviality and spiritual bleakness, he can open up to us a transcendental world, and intimately involve us in the profundity of his mind, as it reveals itself in his music.

I’m not sure how far Peter Franklin would agree with this.