Gilbert Kaplan
American businessman, journalist, Mahler scholar and conductor Gilbert Kaplan was born in New York City on 3 March 1941. During his business career, he made a large fortune by creating and editing the successful magazine Institutional Investor, and then selling it.
Following a chance hearing of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, Kaplan became obsessed with the work, buying Mahler's original manuscript (and baton), co-editing a new critical edition of the work, and becoming known as a conductor of just this one work. He conducted it more than a hundred times, appearing with more than fifty orchestras. He occasionally also conducted the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony.
Critical opinion of his performances was sharply divided: some of the orchestral musicians who worked with him dismissed him as a charlatan who couldn't keep a steady beat, but many critics claimed that the resulting performances were exceptional.
Gilbert Kaplan died on 1 January 2016, aged seventy-four.