Biography

He conducted the world premiere performance of Mahler's "Symphony No. 9".

During his last years, he re-recorded most of his repertoire in stereo for Columbia (now Sony) Masterworks, including all of Mahler's and Beethoven's symphonies.

He was Gustav Mahler's assistant conductor, and made the first recordings of Mahler's "Symphony No. 5", "Symphony No. 9", and "Das Lied von der Erde" (The Song of the Earth).

During his lifetime, he did more to champion the music of Gustav Mahler than almost any other conductor. In 1960, Leonard Bernstein, who became Mahler's greatest champion in later years, was about to record Mahler's Symphony No. 1, when he heard Walter's recording of it, and out of admiration for the performance, refused to make his own recording of the symphony until after Walter's death. Bruno Walter died in 1962, and Bernstein made his own first recording of the symphony in 1966.

Several of his officially released recordings are partially or totally devoted to rehearsals of classical works. The most famous of these is the 2-LP set in which he rehearses all four movements of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Symphony No. 36, known as the "Linz Symphony", and then performs the complete work. It is now available on CD, and is perhaps the first commercially available recording by a major recording company (Columbia Masterworks, now Sony Masterworks) of a conductor rehearsing and then playing an entire concert work.