Gustav Mahler’s circle of friends and colleagues ran into hundreds. Alongside famous contemporaries such as Richard Strauss and Gerhart Hauptmann, it included many people whose connection to Mahler is well known, but about whom we otherwise know little – from opera singer Rosa Papier, who was instrumental to Mahler’s engagement at the Vienna State Opera; landscape photographer Hugo Henneberg, whose wife Marie became godmother to Mahler’s daughter; to the lawyer Serafin Bondi, a member of the vegetarian association Mahler also belonged to. The book provides seventy fascinating biographies, filling the many gaps in Mahler’s biography.

The for the first time deciphered personal notes by Alban Berg give a multilayer genre picture of the Viennese bourgeoisie after the turn of the century. Alban Berg was undoubtedly the master of the Viennese musical modernity. Herwig Knaus tabulated and deciphered thousands of notes and letter drafts of Berg’s unpublished works. This unique biography which offers a new and authentic view at the artist emerged out of it. The until now available sources that where sometimes heavily censured by his wife Helene Nahowski gave only a directed view at the composer. Many aspects of Alban Berg’s biography were left out: his difficulties with his own family and his lesbian sister, the economical troubles resulting from the war- and postwar period, his relation to women, collegues, and – seen in the background of the traditional Viennese anti-Semitism – his relation to his teacher Arnold Schönberg. Out of those unvarnished insights into Alban Berg’s private life not only a very vivid portrait of this musical rebel emerges but also an exciting genre picture of the period after the break-down of the Danube Monarchy.

Born in the year of the “Great Comet”, the path of this child prodigy from Raidling, Burgenland first led to Vienna and later Paris, the Mecca of the musical world at the time. There, Franz Liszt became highly successful as a piano virtuoso and led the life of a sought-after bohemian. Always searching for success as a composer, Liszt’s torn inner state marked his artistic development as much as his love affairs. After concert tours through all of Europe, he was appointed director of Weimar’s court orchestra, where he helped Richard Wagner’s opus achieve a breakthrough. Jan Jiracek von Arnim embarks on a fascinating journey exploring the composer’s life. He follows Liszt’s years on the road as a virtuoso, visionary, musical pioneer, superstar and soul-searcher as he takes a closer look at the person and musician. The result is this magnificent portrait of an exceptional artist.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt devoted himself to the study of early music, the way it is played and the sound of period instruments from an early age. In 1953 he founded the famous Concentus Musicus with his wife Alice and other musicians. This was to provide a forum for his work on period instruments and the historic performance practice of renaissance and baroque music. It was not until four years later that the Concentus Musicus first performed in public. Alice Harnoncourt has brought together the unpublished diary entries and notes of her husband, which recount his explorations on the trail of early musical sounds. It is a fascinating and entertaining journey, during which Harnoncourt had to accomplish much to listen his way towards the original period sound.