When I began listening to music seriously, in about 1950, I had read about Mahler but wasn’t able to hear any — almost none of his works was available on 78s, apart from the celebrated pre-war recordings of the Ninth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde, under Bruno Walter, and they were way beyond a teenager’s pocket. Reading about his symphonies — vast, anguished, tormented, ecstatic — I was desperate, and when I finally managed to hear that recording of the Ninth I was suitably overwhelmed, as I still am.
During the 1950s I was able, slowly, to hear, though not to get to know, the rest of his output, and responded with prepackaged ecstasy. The most shattering of my Mahler experiences was the famous Das Lied, recorded in 1952, again under Walter, with Ferrier and Patzak, a work which the composer told Walter he was afraid people would not survive — and, of course, he really hoped that they wouldn’t.
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