The Gould/ForresterUrlicht performance was given at the 1957 Stratford (Ontario) Music Festival, and was released on Sony laser disc SLV 48 401 in 1992. The other movements of the symphony were not performed. During the previous summer at the same festival Gould had conducted Schoenberg's Ode to Napoleon. Through much of his career he fancied himself a potential conductor and had plans near the end of his life to give up the piano entirely for a conducting career. In his very last recording of anything (July/September 1982), he conducted a daringly slow performance of the original version of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, available on Sony SK 46279.
Gould was quite a Mahler enthusiast, and said at one point (in his calculatedly provocative style) that he felt Mahler was at his best when dealing with the contrapuntal intricacies of things like the Eighth Symphony, and at his worst when setting Chinese poetry.
James