Tony Duggan replies to me:

>>Of the ones I've heard, I most like Walter and Kubelik.  Klemperer I find
>>just plain too slow
>
>I find that very puzzling.  Which version have you heard? In his main
>recordings of Mahler 2 in speed terms Klemperer is faster than most.
>This is why his recordings of the Mahler 2nd can be fitted on to one
>compact disc.  There is a "live" one from 1971 on Arkadia which is slow
>but Klemperer was very old then and that was when he became slower in
>all his performances.

Someone wrote me this very comment off-list.  So, if nobody minds, I'll
paste roughly what I answered.

I'm almost "temperamentally" allergic to Klemperer in 19th-century
repertoire.  I don't like his Beethoven or Brahms either (especially not
the "definitive" Deutsches Requiem), and the Mahler 2 still seems to me
more Romantic than early modern.

It was the EMI recording I was talking about.  Don't know the Arkadia.
But that just goes to show you how subjective these things are.  It's
not a question of measurable time, but of how the time "feels." For you,
there's a forward impulse, and thus Klemperer can sustain the tempi he
sets.  I don't feel that impulse.

Steve Schwartz