The Bruckner wasn’t much later and was preceded by Mozart’s No.29, which was why I was listening – and could Leinsdorf have been the conductor?... Anyway, I stayed with the Bruckner and was sufficiently impressed to save for the Karajan on two full-price Columbia LPs. There were few other versions and none at all of some of the early Bruckner symphonies, just as - incredible though it may now sound - there were no recordings in the catalogue c.1960 of either Mahler 3 or 6. The venerable F.Charles Adler recordings were reissued around then and shortly followed by Bernstein’s 3 - and then the floodgates opened!
But to go back to the query that provoked this correspondence, I’m not sure that it much matters where you start (the Adagietto is low on my list of favourites), though earlier Mahler probably make a more immediate appeal, but you need to listen and keep listening, preferably with some background information. I recall the Karajan Bruckner had an exhaustive note by, I think, Michael Rose, that described the music in great but non-technical detail which I found enormously helpful whereas the Walter ‘Resurrection’ had very little about the music, most frustrating to a beginner.
Sixty years on I still love both composers above most others and still, I think, the 'Resurrection' and Bruckner 8 are the ones I’d choose for that desert island.
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