Music: World-Weary Colossus

The nine symphonies of the late Gustav Mahler are colossal, brooding, heaven-storming, seldom-played. This week,* the Radio City Music Hall symphony began to play them all, conducted by Erno Rapee.

Last of the great line of Central European symphonists, Mahler, a Bohemian Jew, has been dead for 30 years, but among musicians his name is still good for a dogfight. In Vienna, for Nazi reasons, Gustav Mahlerstrasse has been renamed Meistersingerstrasse—rendered Gustav Meistersingerstrasse by subversive Viennese. In the U.S., Mahler partisans are organized as intensely as movie-fan clubs. One group awards a Mahler...

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