Reclaiming late-romantic music: singing devils and distant sounds - 14

Why are some of the most beloved and frequently performed works of the late-Romantic period - Mahler, Delius, Debussy, Sibelius, Puccini - regarded by many critics as perhaps not quite of the first rank?

Why has modernist discourse continued to brand these works as overly sentimental and emotionally self-indulgent?

Peter Franklin takes a close and even-handed look at how and why late-Romantic symphonies and operas steered a complex course between modernism and mass culture in the period leading up to the Second World War.