Play it Again, Gilbert!
Gilbert Kaplan is a man with a mission, and that mission is to conduct Mahler's Second Symphony. That's all this self-taught conductor EVER conducts.

Kaplan's musical training had consisted only of childhood piano lessons when, at age 25, he saw a 1965 performance of Mahler's Second ("Resurrection") at Carnegie Hall, conducted by the legendary Stokowski. Something in his economist soul snapped. He needed to conduct that work.

Fortunately for him - and, it would seem by his positive reviews, for the music world as well - Kaplan went on to become a wealthy man on Wall Street, later founding the magazine Institutional Investor. With his fortune, he was able to hire conductor Charles Zachary to resurrect him through instruction in music theory, how to read music, and how to conduct. He then rented Carnegie Hall and the services of the entire American Symphony Orchestra in order to practice conducting, and later to give a private performance.

Positive feedback from that first show propelled Kaplan to go even further. Since then he has conducted the Mahler Second - but nothing else - with over 50 orchestras around the world and released an acclaimed (1988) recording of the piece with the London Philharmonic. In a Feb. 11 article in the New York Times, Kaplan says "I don't regard myself as part of the profession. I do Mahler's Second Symphony because I think I've got something to say about it."

And Kaplan's not done saying it: He is currently working on what he considers the "definitive" recording of the piece, working with Mahler's extensive notes (to correct what he sees as numerous mistakes in the standard treatment) and the Vienna Philharmonic itself. "Mahler wrote more notes than any other composer... You can't get a great performance unless you know these intentions."

The new work will be released this fall on the Deutsche Grammaphon label.

Link to the New York Times article

Link to the Kennedy Center in Washington, where Kaplan will conduct (oh, you guess!) on April 1-3, 2004, with the National Symphony Orchestra.

Link to a concise bio of Kaplan at the site of the Pittsburgh Symphony.

Link to an offering of his current (non-definitive - but, from the customer reviews, apparently stirring) recording at Amazon.com

Link to a recent review in the UK newspaper, The Guardian Jan 7, 2003