Truth, If Not Beauty

I'd just like to point out that yesterday's little haiku (bit of a redundancy there) is true, absolutely so. The bird is a regular outside our house in KL, and confirmedly daft, and loud. It really was Mahler's second - I didn't choose it just for the helpful syllable count. It was around nine o'clock in the morning and I was listening to Rattle's recording with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. I'd got the french windows downstairs open and, as usual, there was a bit of extraneous sound wafting in. Then we hit the fourth movement and something, I suppose Dame Janet Baker's glorious warbling, set the bird going and it accompanied her throughout the movement. I'm not sure whether the result was an improvement on Mahler's original but I like to think he would have approved.