“Strange enough Mahler took note of me immediately; not only because of my face, which could be called beautiful at the time, but also because of my sharp, tense manner.  He looked at me through his glasses long and searchingly.”

• Alma Mahler, on her first encounter with Gustav

If you have only heard one piece of Mahler’s music, it likely would have been this slow movement from the Fifth Symphony.  Scored for just strings and harp, it has garnered a life of its own as a separate piece.  It has been used in films, most famously in the Luchino Visconti film,  “Death in Venice.”  A number of first rate choreographers have used the music in their dance programs.  Leonard Bernstein played it at the funeral of Senator Robert Kennedy.  Bernstein played it in a memorial for his mentor Serge Koussevitzky.  When the news of Bernstein’s own death traveled in the…