Believe it or not, there was a time not all that long ago when there were not hundreds of Mahler recordings in the catalog and performances of his symphonies were something of a rarity. The great Mahler revival blossomed in the 1960s and Leonard Bernstein was one of the figureheads. While there were other distinguished conductors working for the cause, Bernstein, as a composer and music director of one of Mahler's own orchestras seemed to feel a particularly strong identification with the music if not the man himself.