Honored today, Gustav Mahler was vilified as a composer during his lifetime

Guitar virtuoso Steve Vai is a fan of the late 19th-century composer Gustav Mahler. "Go listen to some music that you'd never think that you would listen to or expect you would listen to. For instance, if you're a big metal head, I would challenge you to go and listen to Mahler's 4th and 5th symphonies. Ten times each with an open mind. That could be more valuable than anything else I've given you because that's really powerful and incredible music. … Your world will change. Your world will change. It's mind-expanding."

Mahler was not so revered during his lifetime, however. When his music was being derided by audiences and critics alike, he remarked to his soon-to-be wife, "My time will yet come." While he is now considered one of classical music's great composers of the late Romantic period, he did not live to see that day. Mahler thought his Fourth Symphony, which the Elgin Symphony Orchestra will perform this weekend, April 30 and May 1, might bring him the accolades he craved, but to no avail. The work was denigrated for the very things he thought would make the piece accessible - its light, upbeat tone, its brevity, and its simple childlike innocence.

At the Fourth Symphony's 1901 premiere in Munich, the work was booed and condemned as tasteless. Even in America after a New York performance in 1904, a critic called the piece "a drooling and emasculated musical monstrosity … the most painful musical torture to which (the critic) has been compelled to submit." Today, Mahler's Symphony No. 4 is beloved and the most performed of all his symphonies.

The vitriol toward Mahler was on display even at his death. New York Tribune music critic Henry Khrebiel was merciless. Mahler's influence, was "prejudicial to good taste" and "the injury that has been done cannot be undone." Khrebiel confidently pronounced, "We cannot see how any of his music will long survive him. There is no place for it between the old and new schools"

It took many decades before Mahler was recognized as a composer, the resurgence of his works due in part to Leonard Bernstein, whose first symphony is also being performed at the ESO season finale concerts April 30 and May 1. Bernstein was a great proponent of Mahler's work. He twice recorded Mahler's complete symphonies and the second cycle is considered one of Bernstein's greatest achievements.

Why was Mahler's work so maligned by contemporaries? American composer Aaron Copland, another Mahler fan, explained: "Mahler's faults have been thoroughly exploited. He is admittedly long-winded, trite, he lacks taste, he unblushingly plagiarizes … His music is full of human frailty. But when all is said, there remains something extraordinarily touching about it, which compensates for the weaknesses. All the nine symphonies abound in personality - he had his own way of saying and doing everything. … But Mahler would be an important figure even if his music were not so engrossing. Two facets of his musicianship were years in advance of their time - one, the curiously contrapuntal fabric of the textures; the other, more obvious, his strikingly original instrumentation. … However one may regard him as a composer, it is impossible to deny his influence, direct or indirect on the present day. "

Gustav Mahler is now considered a pioneer of 20-century composition techniques, particularly progressive tonality, and has been named as an influence by musicians and composers like Bernstein, Copland, Alban Berg, Benjamin Britten, Arnold Schoenberg, and yes, even Steve Vai.

Music Director Andrew Gram will conduct the ESO, named 2016 Illinois Orchestra of the Year by the Illinois Council of Orchestras, in their season finale concerts April 30 and May 1. The program holds Bernstein's Symphony No. 1, "Jeremiah" and Mahler's Symphony No. 4, both featuring soprano Laura Wilde, a member of the Chicago Lyric Opera's Ryan Opera Center. Concerts will be 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 30, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, May 1, at the Hemmens Cultural Center, 45 Symphony Way in Elgin.

For tickets, which start at $30, go to elginsymphony.org or call (847) 888-4000. Saturday night concertgoers are invited after the performance to attend "Mingle with the Musicians" at the Elgin Public House.