Pierre Paquin writes:

>If I had played a lot of Mahler, I would have ended up with whining, self-
>pitying children who would have ended up hates their parents.

Hmmmm.  Monday morning my wife hustled me out of bed and off to a
rehearsal, Ivan Fischer conducting the Munich Philharmonic.  Mahler 5 on
the docket.  The first half went well, I thought.  Fischer is a Hungarian
who conducts more German than the Germans do when playing German stuff.
Viewed from the rear on the podium he brings to mind Furtwaengler, even
though the hair around the bald pate is not yet gray and better kempt.

In the first third of the last movement there Fischer ran into trouble
trying to confer order on Mahler's ordrered cacophony.He stopped the band.
"Meine Damen und Herren," I heard him say in his accented German," It is
like this: when Mahler was five he visited a fair.  The sound left an
impression...."

Fischer's Mahler 5 took over an hour and twenty minutes to perform, replays
included.  In the intermission that followed the lines leading into the
ladies' rooms were depressingly impressive.  Mahler, when editing his
composition, mercifully could have kept that in mind.  Marvellous passages,
monstrous work.

Denis Fodor