Mahler: Sym 1 / Wagner: Tannhauser / R. Strauss

Leinsdorf scored an enormous personal triumph early in his first season (1962-63) as the Boston Symphony's Music Director with Mahler's First Symphony.

The Mahler was Leinsdorf's second album for Phase 4 after a typically lucid pairing of Wagner and Richard Strauss made in 1969. 'Bleeding chunks' they may be, but in fact Leinsdorf rejected all the available suites from Der Rosenkavalier and made his own, observing both the chronology and the expressive narrative of the opera, and critics again found they preferred his version to any other.