“There is no more irony, sarcasm, no resentment whatsoever. There is only the majesty of death,” said Otto Klemperer of the closing Adagio of Mahler’s 9th Symphony, a work he had first conducted in Berlin in 1925. More than 50 years later, and soon after the sessions for this recording, his mighty interpretation of the symphony at London’s Royal Festival Hall with the New Philharmonia Orchestra was greeted with a standing ovation.