Mahler's Fifth Symphony is a consistent crowd-pleaser with its powerful opening funeral march and its soulful Adagietto, originally a musical love letter to the composer's wife. Leonard Bernstein had a special affinity for Mahler, perhaps because he too was torn between his talents for conducting and composing. His '60s recordings almost single-handedly rescued Mahler's then declining reputation, but the live recordings with Mahler's own Vienna Philharmonic in the final years of Bernstein's life will stand as his legacy. It is hard to imagine a more emotionally satisfying reading of the Fifth in particular, by turns desperately anxious and ecstatically jubilant.
