Mad About Mahler's Music

The founder of Institutional Investor, a journal that linked financial professionals working for large companies all over the world, Gilbert Kaplan, wanted nothing so much as to conduct his favorite composer's Second Symphony some day. His favorite composer was Gustav Mahler and his favorite Mahler piece was the Resurrection Symphony.

At the age of 42, Kaplan hired a conductor to teach him conducting and rented the American Symphony Orchestra to make his first debut leading Mahler's Resurrection Symphony at Carnegie Hall in 1983. Since then, Kaplan has led more than 45 orchestras all over the world. In November of 1999, he raised his baton at Symphony Hall in Boston to conduct the Boston University Symphony Orchestra.

Kaplan's recording of Mahler's Second Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra is the best-selling Mahler recording in history. How did he do it? Why did he do it? To what lengths did he go in following his passion? And how does the music world regard him? Hear a conversation with Gilbert Kaplan himself and Michael Shavelson, executive editor of Bostonia and the BU Bridge newspaper, who writes regularly about classical music.