For those of you that find Bernstein's later work hard to parse, I highly recomm...

For those of you that find Bernstein's later work hard to parse, I highly recommend his first symphony, written before his own style was fully developed. It's like an extended essay about everything he likes about Mahler. His recordings of Mahler's work are often criticised for not being faithful to the intent of the composer, but that's to completely miss the point: they're deliberately and wonderfully interpretive.

I wouldn't be so sure West Side Story is going to outlast Mahler 5, though. They might tie...