'Thrilling.' John Banville, Guardian

The Eighth Symphony was going to be different from anything Mahler had ever done before: it would speak in different tones, and of a different kind of experience. The world premiere in Munich in the summer of 1910 was the artistic breakthrough for which the composer had yearned all his adult life.

Stephen Johnson recounts the symphony's far-reaching effect on composers, conductors and writers of the time. Placing Mahler within his world, The Eighth reassesses Mahler's work in the context of the prevailing thought of his age, but also against the backdrop of that tumultuous summer, when Mahler worked desperately on his Tenth Symphony, was betrayed by his wife, and consulted Sigmund Freud. It is a story like no other.

Stephen Johnson is a writer and composer, and broadcasts regularly for BBC Radio 3, Radio 4 and the World Service. He also writes for the Independent, the Guardian, BBC Music Magazine and Gramophone. He is the author of Bruckner Remembered (Faber, 1998) and How Shostakovich Changed My Mind (Notting Hill Editions, 2018).