I was listening to Mahler when I was 19, far off days when friends who were listening to music thought there weren't any composers worth talking about after the Three Bs, and the others weren't listening to much at all. Looking back, I reckon there must have been at the time about 103 like me countrywide.
Not so much favourite as the only available were the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and unfinished 10th, and the Song of the Earth, which Mahler never heard performed himself, but which says everything you need to know about everything really. With Anton, it was the 4th (of course) and the great 9th.
I was in love with Wagner. But I remember my exhilaration on discovering there were the two of them, with all their stuff, quite unsuspected, all there for me.
