I know Dan can relate to this (“TH is Thomas Hampson):
Q: Is it true that you first discovered Mahler’s music on a car stereo?
TH: Yes. I was young – probably 19 or 20 – I discovered Mahler while listening to a cassette recording of his First Symphony that I had checked out from the local public library in Spokane, WA. It was Seiji Ozawa conducting. I was on the road between Spokane and Idaho, where I was shuttling back and forth to teach at a community college. I listened to all sorts of things in the car, and was driving my little Toyota Celica down the freeway. As the symphony pulled me in I was slowing down more and more to pay attention. I wasn’t inebriated, of course, and there was no bad weather to slow me down, but there I was driving 30 miles an hour on a freeway. At that point I pulled over at a rest stop to avoid causing an accident, and wound up being an hour late. From that point on I started talking to other musicians non-stop about Mahler. I started to listen to his symphonies, and quit listening in the car!
