| 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.  |  | Bruno Walter, the most intimate friend of Mahler | 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«.  | |  | | | | | | Alma with Bruno Walter (1948) | | Alma with Bruno Walter, Eugene Ormandy and Igor Strawinsky (1948) |
| |
