Roger Hecht wrote:

>It's interesting this pairing of Mahler and Bruckner as if they were
>brothers.  They were very different composers.

Oh, very much agreed.  I hope I didn't give the impression that I
personally was lumping them together.  But that was my high school
impression from reading the old books for music lovers I found in the
public library.  You know the deal--"both wrote 9 symphonies because
Beethoven did"--which isn't true in either case--and both are [as I said
earlier] longwinded and boring.  It was a case of damning with faint
praise.

>...I can't think of a conductor who does most of the symphonies
>of both equally well, though many have tried.  Generally a conductor is
>better at one or the other.  Someone will think of somebody who's equally
>adept at both, I guess.

I get the impression that there's some consensus that Furtwaengler was
"the" Bruckner conductor, but there is no consensus as to "the" Mahler
conductor.  Maybe some would mention Bernstein in that context, others
Klemperer--but I don't see a consensus there.  Maybe it's because Mahler
sends mixed messages??? [mind you, I don't consider ANYone THE conductor
of ANYthing, although I do have some favorites.]

Chris Bonds