Leonard Bernstein's way with orchestras that wouldn't give him what he wanted was usually imploring, even beseeching. He was disappointed'the musicians were not so much failing him, the conductor, as failing the composer, failing the music. But on one occasion, his disappointment turned to anger. In 1972, he was working with the Vienna Philharmonic on Gustav Mahler's Fifth Symphony. Mahler had been the head of the Vienna Court Opera and had conducted the Philharmonic from 1897 to 1907. This was their own music'and they were holding back. Bernstein was rehearsing the stormy first movement of the Fifth Symphony. In his own score of the work, now lodged at the New York Philharmonic Archives, he had written, before the opening movement, 'Rage'hostility'sublimation by Mahler and heaven.' And then, 'Angry bitter sorrow mixed with sad comforting lullabies'rocking a corpse.' But he was getting neither rage nor consolation from the Vienna Philharmonic. Sighing and shrugging, irritably...
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