Dear Lenny Merely a line to tell you that 1) you nearly caused me to have an accident and 2) I heard a performance of Mahler Second that was more overwhelming that anything I remembered even you ever having done - and that goes back to my unforgettable first encounter with the work, singing it as a teenager under you at Tanglewood. Earlier today I drove down to NYC from Lenox. When I got close enough to catch a City station worth fielding, the radio was in the middle of the Mahler. Almost immediately, even with the lo fi of the car radio, I realized I was surrounded by an extraordinary performance. By the middle of the last movement, I concluded that a new champion of the work had succeeded in snatching from you the belt reading “Most in Tune with Mahler’s Soul.” I anticipated the penultimate choral chord – and what genius did it take to bring this epic to its perfect climax simply by expanding a dominant from closed to open position? – but what I heard so overpowered my expectations that I did something I haven’t done in a couple of years. I cried. It only lasted a moment, but in that moment, I nearly swerved into another car as we came to the 59th Street exit of the West Side Highway. You needn’t worry. By 42nd Street I had already forgiven you. During the interim, Marty Bookspan had announced which Philharmonic concert had just been rebroadcast. Does anyone realize how great music dangerous can be? I mean, Plato’s dead and all that, but even he could only have had a more formal, Dionysian version of Rock in mind, and everybody knows how to complain about that. No, I’m referring to the perils of the classics. I hope Surgeon General Koop doesn’t find out. As always with love, Lenny. << less