Agony & Ecstasy: Leonard Bernstein's Mahler

To Leonard Bernstein, conducting the music of Gustav Mahler was like conducting a holy mass. Bernstein was at his best with Mahler's works; his recordings of the great Austrian composer became a inexorable part of his towering legacy. The connection was so powerful because Bernstein not only embraced Mahler's romantic heights, but also loved his chaotic modernism, his grim humour, and the psychological disruption of his symphonies. To this day, nobody has come close to the agony and ecstasy of Leonard Bernstein's Mahler.