Deryk Barker wrote:

>>Well - the penny has finally dropped.  I have never been a Mahler fan
>>(I would go so far as saying I actively disliked his music), but this
>>recording has forced me to radically change my opinion.
>
>Not to mention splitting an infinitive...:-)

Nice to know that somebody outside Britain actually knows that such a thing
exists (and, of course, it just had to be Deryk - is there nothing that man
doesn't know?)

>>It has been on my player for a lot of the past week.  And I am actually
>>growing to enjoy it.  Liking it, almost.
>
>Be a man JE, admit it!

OK - I still like it.  I just have this horrible feeling that I am
finally giving in to peer pressure (counting myself the peer to all you
intellectuals on the list) - and I have always resented being put in a
position where other people can say "I told you so." Especially when those
other people are DB!

>Chailly's recording (which I picked up a week ago and have listened to
>several times) is very good, but I don't think it represents any really
>different approach to the music, not is it a challenger to the handful I'd
>nominate as the very best (Inoue, Barbirolli and Shipway leap immediately
>to mind), however it is probably the best *recording* I've heard.  Very
>impressive.

Would my friend Deryk expect the San Francisco Symphony under MTT to do any
better than Chailly when they perform in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam?
Will they have the enormous success fellow-lister Janos is predicting? Or
is that just a typical piece of OTT Californian hype?

I shall take your suggestions under review - as you would expect me to.

Jonathan