Bradley Cooper’s Oscar-nominated Maestro focuses on the man considered the “first great American conductor,” Leonard Bernstein, who composed such diverse works as West Side Story and Candide.

Alongside Todd Field’s Tár (2022), this is another high-profile recent film centring on the life of a conductor, putting classical music in the spotlight.

Both films feature Bernstein prominently, as the protagonist of Maestro and the mentor of the fictional Lydia Tár. However, a third composer-conductor looms in the background of both films: Gustav Mahler (1860-1911).

This notable presence of Mahler poses the question: Why does the music of Mahler remain so popular and moving to this day?

Mahler’s significance includes his inventive modernism and highly expressive writing that communicated emotions shaped by his fascinating (albeit melancholic) life — and the turbulent history surrounding how his work was received.

In Maestro, Mahler is not explicitly discussed, but his music features prominently in the film, with a climactic reenactment of Bernstein conducting a triumphant finale of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 performed by the London Symphony Orchestra in Ely Cathedral (near Cambridge) in 1973.

Maestro frames Bernstein’s experience of Mahler’s finale as being so powerful it reignites Bernstein’s relationship with his wife, Felicia Montealegre Bernstein. Bernstein was instrumental in pioneering the revival of Mahler’s music.

Mahler worked mainly as a conductor of operas, notably his 1897 appointment as director of the Vienna Court Opera (now the Vienna State Opera). From 1908-10, he held an........

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