I bought -- and listened to -- a Mahler symphony! No one can say I have not been faithful to Gustav Mahler since around 1956 when I bought my first Mahler pieces (fourth symphony, and Kindertotenlieder). The new acquisition was Mahler's fifth symphony, I work I got to know first as a teenager by studying the full score I loaned from a public library; the new CD has Valery Gergiev conducting the LSO (very fine recording, and orchestral playing).

But, alas: Mahler is not for me (except for a few isolated bits). I find too much of the music banal and superficial. Mahler was a great orchestrator, but so many of the bits I like (usually involving small forces of harp, pianissimo violins, woodwind, etc) seem to turn up in all the works. Set beside two other Austrians who happened to write nine symphonies -- Schubert and Bruckner -- Mahler is revealed as not being in their league. There is no profundity, no spiritual element, in Mahler's works. Flashy; yes. Well-written; yes. But no greatness and often noisy (Stürmisch bewegt, mit größter Vehemenz for the second movement tempo indication says it all). I remember a concert in London where I last heard Mahler's fifth and finding the sheer noise level thoroughly disagreeable.

Added to the fact that the two plaice I had bought turned out to be scrawny and unsatisfactory, and I didn't enjoy the rosé wine I had with them; it was not a great evening! Back to Schubert and Bruckner.