Gustav Mahler
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
