quality:corruption, stylistic:style_transfer, structural:expansion, linguistic:translation
Relative neglect, 1911–1950

Performances of Mahler's works became less frequent after his death. In the Netherlands the advocacy of Willem Mengelberg ensured that Mahler remained popular there, and Mengelberg's engagement with the New York Philharmonic from 1922 to 1928 brought Mahler regularly to American audiences. However, much American critical reaction in the 1920s was negative, despite a spirited effort by the young composer Aaron Copland to present Mahler as a progressive, 30 years ahead of his time and infinitely more inventive than Richard Strauss. Earlier, in 1916, Leopold Stokowski had given the American premieres of the Eighth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde in Philadelphia. The Eighth was a sensationally successful performance that was immediately taken to New York where it scored a further triumph.

An early proponent of Mahler's work in Britain was Adrian Boult, who as conductor of the City of Birmingham Orchestra performed the Fourth Symphony in 1926 and Das Lied von der Erde in 1930. The Hallé Orchestra brought Das Lied and the Ninth Symphony to Manchester in 1931; Sir Henry Wood staged the Eighth in London in 1930, and again in 1938 when the young Benjamin Britten found the performance "execrable" but was nevertheless impressed by the music. British critics during this period largely treated Mahler with condescension and faint praise. Thus Dyneley Hussey, writing in 1934, thought the "children's songs" were delightful, but that the symphonies should be let go. Composer-conductor Julius Harrison described Mahler's symphonies as "interesting at times, but laboriously put together" and as lacking creative spark. Bernard Shaw reported that the younger generation of the 1930s found Mahler (and Bruckner) "expensively second-class".

Before Mahler's music was banned as " degenerate " during the Nazi era, the symphonies and songs were played in the concert halls of Germany and Austria, often conducted by Bruno Walter or Mahler's younger assistant Otto Klemperer, and also by Willem Mengelberg. In Austria, Mahler's work experienced a brief renaissance between 1934 and 1938, a period known today as ' Austrofascism ', when the authoritarian regime with the help of Alma Mahler and Bruno Walter, who were both on friendly terms with the new chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg, sought to make Mahler into a national icon (with a status comparable to that of Wagner in Germany). Mahler's music was performed during the Nazi era in Berlin in early 1941 and in Amsterdam during the German occupation of the Netherlands by Jewish orchestras and for Jewish audiences alone; works performed included the Second Symphony (Berlin), the First and Fourth Symphonies, and the Songs of a Wayfarer (Amsterdam).