Your First Mahler record

[Barbirollians]

Aware as I am that this could after my first Beethoven lead to all manner of offshoots I wondered what was the first Mahler record forumites owned , bought or listened to ?

There is something about Mahler that appeals to the young and emotional surely unlike many other composers.

My first record nearly out me off for life Tennstedt's EMI Mahler 3 - it just seemed very long and noisy .

Then I stuck at it and Maazel's VPO Mahler 4 and Walter's Columbia Mahler 1 won me over - both second hand LPs .

By chance I then heard in my second year at university Ferrier singing the Abschied and I was utterly hooked .

[Petrushka]

My very first Mahler record was the Symphony No 1 with the Concertgebouw and Bernard Haitink purchased on February 9 1973. A BBC TV series called Great Orchestras of the World had featured the making of this recording as part of the programme devoted to the Concertgebouw and the recording was issued to coincide with the broadcast that same week. I found I wanted to hear more of this exciting music following the snippets in the TV programme and the recording, when I heard it, just blew me away. It still does! Never looked back.

[pastoralguy]

Tennstedt's symphony 7 with the LPO. (Although I've never been sure how many times he recorded it with them). I was playing it was a youth orchestra and I almost wore the cassette tape out.

[Roehre]

My very first Mahler record was the Symphony No 1 with the Concertgebouw and Bernard Haitink purchased on February 9 1973. .....

the same record, last week exactly 40 years ago (June 7th 1974), followed on June 10th with Cooke's 10th Morris/New Philharmonia, triggering going for the Kubelik set october 10th 1974 (a lot of money for a poor student)

[gurnemanz]

By chance I then heard in my second year at university Ferrier singing the Abschied and I was utterly hooked .

I think my first Mahler disc was an Ace of Clubs LP with Ferrier doing the Rückert Lieder and Lisa Della Casa doing Strauss Vier Letzte Lieder which I played till the grooves wore out - either that or the Fischer-Dieskau, Schwarzkopf Knaben Wunderhorn in terrific sound. It might also have been Classics for Pleasure Fourth Symphony with Horenstein and Margaret Price. Fond memories - still got the LP but haven't played it for years and never got a CD.

[Bryn]

As I feel sure I have mentioned before, my first Mahler disc was the 7th (Abravanel). I could not afford the Bernstein, which came out around the same time.

[DublinJimbo]

Symphony No. 4 with Judith Raskin, George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra (that must have been back in the mid '60s, I'd say).

[jayne lee wilson]

Oh I DO remember this one - Solti's 1964 LSO Mahler 1, the LP cover with its scorching yellow sun burning through a red mist**, so expressive of the performance itself. I walked in the Lancashire countryside that Christmas, hearing and feeling the symphony with every frosty view - from Bohemian Lancashire's woods and fields!

**reproduced in the Decca Legends CD reissue - I turned the booklet inside-out to have it as the cover!.

[richardfinegold]

Symphony 1 Horenstein/LSO.

[reinerfan]

The original Ferrier/Walter Das Lied.

[makropulos]

Mine was the First Symphony with the VPO conducted by Kubelik on Ace of Clubs (ACL 188).
I quickly followed this with the Fourth with the Dresden Staatskapelle conducted by Leopold Ludwig on Heliodor.
And then I heard the "Resurrection" Symphony for the first time (Proms, Kempe, Munich PO) and bought the Klemperer/Philharmonia box set of it as soon as I could afford it.

[Richard Tarleton]

3, Haitink/RCO, 1972, after a performance of 3 by Haitink/LPO - the first time I'd heard a Mahler symphony, live or on record. Quickly followed by 4 with Szell/Cleveland, like DublinJimbo.

[HighlandDougie]

The Third Programme broadcast a Mahler cycle in about 1966 or 1967 which was the start of my love of Mahler. First record was the Merriman/Haefliger/Jochum DLvDE, closely followed by Kletzki's Mahler 1st (cut - and in mono). Szell's 4th, Bernstein's 6th and Solti's 3rd. Haitink's 5th came a little later (still, I think, my favourite performance) via a 7th (could it have been Abravanel?) and 8th (Flipse). I was resistant to the 2nd (some silly teenage whim) until I heard Klemperer; and wary of the 9th but then I bought Bernie and all was revealed. I think that being able to afford as a poor schoolboy/student only one performance of each was probably a good discipline which I have alas long since forgotten.

[Keraulophone]

Symphony 1 - LSO/James Levine (1975)
RCA offered it at half-price for a limited period. Couldn't afford the Solti (in the school music dept.), but this recording seemed to me just as good at the time.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Initially I had been put off Mahler by my father, who had described it as "heavy-going". At school I decided one day to borrow the LP of Bruno Walter and the NYPO playing the 4th Symphony. I couldn't believe how airy and transparent the sound was - not heavy-going at all. Later I couldn't get the finale of no.1 out of my head as I was cycling from Stockport to Caernarfon. I'd only heard it once (LSO/Solti), and one thing niggled me: a noticeable compression in the the otherwise terrific Decca sound in the climaxes. It seemed it was always this recording that was played over the airwaves.