He has written twelve books about music, which have been translated into 18 languages. The latest is Why Mahler?, a radical interpretation of the most influential composer of modern times. He also writes the blog "Slipped Disc" at Artsjournal.com. Norman Lebrecht’s first novel The Song of Names won a Whitbread Award in 2003 and is scheduled to me made into a major motion picture. His second, The Game of Opposites, was published in the US by Pantheon Books. A third is in preparation.

A collection of Lebrecht columns will be published this year in China, the first such anthology by any western cultural writer. A Lebrecht conversation appears monthly in The Strad, magazine of the strings profession. The Lebrecht Interview will return in July 2011 on BBC Radio 3. The Lebrecht blog, slipped disc, is the most heavily visited musical commentary in the UK.