Chapter 33 - Mahler on Disc

Summary

This essay sketches a history of Mahler on record, focusing not on when a recording was made or what stylistic qualities it embodies, but when it became available to the public in a durable form. For a history of recording, performance practice is less significant than the ways in which record production and marketing shaped Mahler’s reception and enhanced the reputations of conductors, orchestras, and labels. At the center of these developments has been the evolution of the recorded Mahler cycle, the first appearance of which, over half a century ago, transformed the ways in which audiences, collectors, and commentators came to view the composer. After a brief consideration of 78s and the early history of the LP, the chapter lays out commercial, administrative, and technological conditions that led to cycles by Leonard Bernstein, Maurice Abravenel, Bernard Haitink, and Rafael Kubelik.