Wes Phillips

I've been kicking myself for years for not saving the copy of The New York Times in which Hans Fantel wrote about hearing Bruno Walter's 1938 performance of Mahler's Ninth Symphony.

Alex Ross got Fantel's permission to reprint it on his marvelous The Rest Is Noise blog.

Fantel used to write about hi-fi for the NYT and audiophiles frequently derided his choices of equipment to review, but when I was an audio salesman, I demonstrated systems and components for Mr. Fantel and he clearly recognized special gear when he heard it—he reigned in his inner geek to reach a wider audience. As you can see from this article, he also knew what recorded music was capable of.