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Bruno Walter (1876-1962)
conductor
Bruno Walter was born Bruno Schlesinger in Berlin. In 1901,
Gustav Mahler, whose disciple and proponent Walter was to
become, summoned him to the Vienna Court Opera. The two soon
became close friends and confidants on both an intellectual
and personal level. The intimacy between Walter and Mahler
was always observed jealously by Alma. She in fact did not
like Bruno Walter and, when he later published a book about
Mahler, she fumed: »I simply don´t appear in it!«.
While even after Mahler´s death, Walter was always there
to support her as a friend - for instance, at Franz Werfel´s
funeral in California, he played a piece by Schubert several
times since Alma was extremely late in arriving - yet when
the American gossip columns started spreading the rumour that
Gustav Mahler´s widow intended to marry the conductor
Bruno Walter, she indignantly denied this »tasteless
joke«.
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