It is early in 1911 and Gustav Mahler is sitting in a railway compartment in Austria, on the final stages of his journey home to Vienna after a strenuous season conducting concerts and opera in New York. Now fifty, he is a celebrated and famous conductor and composer, but he looks pale and ill and his voice is thick with fatigue. With him is his attractive blonde wife Alma, still in her twenties, but bitter and disillusioned. Gustav hopes to complete his still unfinished Tenth Symphony on his return to Vienna.
