Editing Bruno Walter (section)

=== Recordings ===
{{Unreferenced section|date=November 2012}}
[[File:Walter Caricature.png|210px|thumb|Caricature of Walter conducting]]
{{ external media | float = right|width=220px |audio1 = You may listen to Bruno Walter performing [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart]]'s ''Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor K.466'' with the [[Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra]] in 1937 [https://archive.org/details/MOZARTPianoConcertoNo.20InDMinor-NEWTRANSFER/01.I.Allegro.mp3 '''here on archive.org''']}}
Walter's work is documented on hundreds of recordings made between 1900 (when he was 24) and 1961. Most listeners became familiar with him through the stereo recordings made in his last few years, when his health was declining. Some critics have suggested that these recordings do not fully convey what Walter's art must have sounded like in its prime. The late recordings are said to have a geniality that contrasts with the energetic, intense and mercurial performances of earlier decades. Furthermore, Walter's late recordings focus mostly on older compositions, whereas in his youth he often conducted what was then considered newer music.{{citation needed|date=May 2013}}

Walter worked closely with [[Gustav Mahler|Mahler]] as an assistant and protégé. Mahler did not live to perform his ''[[Das Lied von der Erde]]'' or ''[[Symphony No. 9 (Mahler)|Symphony No. 9]]'', but his widow, [[Alma Mahler]], asked Walter to premiere both. Walter led the first performance of ''Das Lied ''in 1911 in Munich and of the Ninth in 1912 in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic. Decades later, Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic (with Mahler's brother-in-law [[Arnold Rosé]] still a concertmaster) made the first recordings of ''Das Lied von der Erde'' in 1936 and of the Ninth Symphony in 1938. Both were recorded live in concert, the latter only two months before the Nazi [[Anschluss]] drove Walter (and Rosé) into exile.{{citation needed|date=May 2013}}

These recordings are of special interest for the performance practices of the orchestra and also for intensity of expression. Walter was to re-record both works successfully in later decades. His famous [[Decca Records|Decca]] ''Das Lied von der Erde'' with [[Kathleen Ferrier]], [[Julius Patzak]] and the [[Vienna Philharmonic]] was made in May 1952, and he recorded it again in stereo, with the New York Philharmonic, in 1960. He conducted the New York Philharmonic in the 1957 stereo recording of the Second Symphony. He recorded the Ninth in stereo in 1961. These recordings, as well as his other American recordings, were released initially by [[Columbia Records]] and later on CD by [[Sony]].{{citation needed|date=May 2013}}

Since Mahler himself never conducted the Ninth Symphony and ''Das Lied von der Erde'', Walter's performances cannot be taken as documentations of Mahler's interpretations. However, in the light of Walter's personal connection with the composer and his having given the original performances, they have another kind of primary authenticity. In his other (greatly esteemed) recordings of Mahler—various songs and the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Symphonies—there is the great added interest that he had heard Mahler's own performances of most of them.{{citation needed|date=May 2013}}

Walter made many highly acclaimed recordings of other great Germanic composers, such as [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]], [[Joseph Haydn|Haydn]], [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]], [[Schubert]], [[Johannes Brahms]], Johann Strauss Jr., and [[Anton Bruckner]], as well as of [[Bach]], [[Wagner]], [[Schumann]], [[Antonín Dvořák|Dvorak]], Richard Strauss, [[Tchaikovsky]], [[Smetana]], and others. Walter was a leading conductor of opera, and recordings of Mozart's [[Don Giovanni]] and [[The Marriage of Figaro]] from both the [[Metropolitan Opera]] and the Salzburg Festival, of Beethoven's ''[[Fidelio]]'', and of Wagner and Verdi are now available on CD. Also of great interest are recordings from the 1950s of his rehearsals of Mozart, Mahler and Brahms, which give insight into his musical priorities and into the warm and non-tyrannical manner—as contrasted with some of his colleagues—with which he related to orchestras.{{citation needed|date=May 2013}}